NEW ORLEANS -- In a city where tourism and conventions are key to reviving a post-Katrina economy, the string of homicides that has opened the year is adding financial anxiety to the heartache and fear.
With Mardi Gras just over a month away, nine killings in the first eight days of the new year had tourism officials scrambling to persuade visitors not to skip the city's biggest party.
"This has done real damage to us here," said Stephen Perry, of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. "We're in a multibillion-dollar perception- and image-driven business. Whenever there is a wave of violence here, it has an immediate chilling impact on those leisure consumers that don't really know our city."
Members of the bureau spent much of the past week reassuring convention representatives that they would be safe in New Orleans, Perry said. A group of about 2,000 convention and meeting planners will be in New Orleans in two weeks to see the progress the city has made since the storm.
The latest spasm of violence (including the shooting death last week of former Halifax filmmaker Helen Hill) came despite the presence of about 300 National Guardsmen and 60 state troopers who were brought in last June to help patrol the streets because of a surge in killings.
On Monday, Police Superintendent Warren Riley said he has not asked for more troops, and is instead considering ways to stretch his hurricane-depleted force. Those could include increasing foot patrols, reassigning officers to front-line duty, and imposing a citywide curfew, he said. Discussion of a possible curfew for the city -- including the French Quarter, where many bars are open 24 hours a day -- would only add to the woes of the business community.
"We're very much opposed to a curfew," said Earl Bernhardt, president of the Bourbon Street Alliance, a merchants organization.
"For one thing, it would send a terrible message nationwide that would hurt us more than the murder rate. It would look like it was totally unsafe to be on the streets after dark."
The police force is down from its pre-Katrina level of 1,700 officers to about 1,400. But that number includes about 100 officers on leave for injuries or illness and 40 recruits in the academy.
New Orleans had 161 homicides last year, the lowest total in 60 years. On a per-capita basis, however, within a post-Katrina population of just over 200,000, the number is an increase from previous years. Even using the high-end population estimate, New Orleans's homicide rate was four times the average rate per 100,000 people in U.S. cities with similar populations, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation crime reports in 2005.
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