U.S.|Raft of Armed Robberies Puts New Orleans Diners on Edge
https://nyti.ms/1OabudM
Raft of Armed Robberies Puts New Orleans Diners on Edge
Patrons and staff members of Patois in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans were robbed at gunpoint on Aug. 20.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times
By Campbell Robertson
NEW ORLEANS — The last dinner check was paid and the half-dozen customers at Patois were lingering at the restaurant bar, celebrating a birthday, a new book and another perfect evening drifting unhurriedly to a close. Someone opened the door to the dark but quiet residential street, so smokers could freely come and go.
A minute later, three men came in, one wearing a mask and the others with hoodies pulled tight around their faces. They flashed pistols and ordered everyone on the floor, then began grabbing purses, phones and cash. The robbery unfolded over an eternal-seeming six minutes, to a soundtrack of whimpers, occasional barked orders and Frank Sinatra singing "My Way" over the speaker system.
The holdup of Patois, on Aug. 20, would be only the first of three armed robberies of bars and restaurants in well-to-do parts of Uptown New Orleans. A little before 10 p.m. on Sept 24, two men dressed similarly to those who held up Patois burst into Atchafalaya restaurant, robbing the staff and diners. Four days later, there were three men again, this time at the Monkey Hill Bar, a cocktail lounge three blocks from Patois.
The police, while acknowledging the similarities, have yet to conclude that the robbers are the same men.
Crime has never been rare in New Orleans; in much of the city it is appallingly routine, as some have noted while watching the outcry about the Uptown robberies. But the brazenness of the holdups, and an accumulating toll of shocking crimes in seemingly safe locales, has triggered a newfound impatience with the authorities and apprehension about what may come next.
"In over 30 years I've never seen anything approaching this," said Brad Hollingsworth, who runs Clancy's, a restaurant beloved by the seersucker crowd, which sits just a block from Patois. Clancy's has hired a guard, for the first time in decades. Customers had been asking about one.
Or Friday, police officials were summoned before the City Council to discuss their overall crime strategy. The police force has shrunk to its lowest size in four decades, a staffing shortfall that will take years to remedy. But the police superintendent, Michael Harrison, insisted that his department was doing its best with the technology and the officers it had.
"As sure as my name is Michael, every member of the N.O.P.D. is doing what we can to No. 1 catch the people who are committing crimes and also prevent the crimes we can prevent," he said.
Violent crime is the chief source of anxiety all over the city these days, because of both to perception and reality. The murder rate hit a 20-year low in 2014, though it is spiking again. In any year, it far outpaces the rate in most other American cities. The number of robberies in 2014 was greater than in any year since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — and armed robberies are up this year — but it was still a fraction of the number in the 1990s.
But while the data is complex, the anecdotes are straightforward: The police took more than 20 minutes to respond to the Patois robbery because, the chief said, they were pursuing suspects in another string of Uptown carjackings, allegedly orchestrated by a middle-aged man and a team of teenagers.
Some have watched the response to the restaurant holdups — the $30,000 award, the involvement of federal law enforcement and the special City Council session — and remarked on the difference when it came to the violent crime that takes place in less-favored parts of town.
"It's an unfortunate situation that these people had to endure," said Tamara Jackson, the executive director of Silence Is Violence, an advocacy group. "But they finally recognize the trauma that African-Americans have endured for years."
In a survey released in August by National Public Radio and the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly six in 10 black New Orleanians said their neighborhoods did not have enough of a police presence, and blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to say they were very worried about becoming victims of a crime. However, blacks were also far less likely than whites to trust the police to do what is right most of the time.
"It's getting worse," said Issac Dixon, the owner of the Purple Rain lounge, a corner bar in a poorer part of town that was held up by three gunmen in May. The story was on the news for a day, he said. He never did find out if the robbers had been caught.
Mr. Dixon's sentiment is widely shared.
"I know some people talking about bringing assault rifles into their restaurants, and I know other people talking about getting out of the business," Robert LeBlanc, who owns several restaurants in New Orleans, said. (Mr. LeBlanc is not a fan of either of these ideas.)
Restaurant owners said they had not yet seen a dip in business, chalking that up to a show of solidarity, the start of the busy season and the resignation of New Orleanians to the risks and rewards of their city.
"There was definitely a feeling that it was bound to happen, that maybe our number had flipped," said Cynthia Joyce, a writer and journalism professor who had been at Patois that night. She knew the staff members well and they knew her; friends came and went, strangers were introduced and the night progressed like so many others in New Orleans.
The violent way it concluded, Ms. Joyce then said with some sadness, was probably not all that unusual for the city either.