NEW ORLEANS — On Thursday, the New Orleans City Council voted on a resolution for the media to stop using New Orleans East as a broad location term when describing events and crime that happen in the area.
Danny Jones lives off of Bundy Road and he’s tired of hearing about all the car burglaries in his neighborhood.
“They need to stop breaking into cars. People work way too hard for their money,” he said.
It is hard to escape that type of news though where Jones lives. NOPD just released surveillance video in hopes of finding the criminals responsible for multiple car burglaries in the 4900 block of Bundy Road.
“We’ve had a lot of spike in crime since the pandemic, people are desperate. People need money,” Anthony Jackson Jr. the President of the Police Community Advisory Board said.
According to the latest Metropolitan Crime Commisssion’s Report, 20 percent of the city’s car burglaries happened in the 7th District.
The crime is causing a stigma in the area, so much in fact that Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen proposed to the City Council a resolution to request that the media refer to specific neighborhoods when reporting on crime and not just New Orleans East as a broad location.
Nguyen said, “We are calling on the media to change this discriminatory practice. Rather than using a blanket term they should be referred to as individual neighborhoods, streets, and subdivisions.”
The resolution passed unanimously by the City Council. Still residents like Jones believe how the media refers to New Orleans East doesn’t really matter because the high crime rate still exists.
“It will always be New Orleans East to me,” Jones said.