Despite the seemingly ubiquitous presence of stories in New Orleans about murder, assault and other violent crime, it was a fairly quiet summer around Loyola.
University Police didn’t send out a single “Be On the Lookout” report from June 1 (Tulane student robbed at gunpoint) to Aug. 2 (attempted car theft out of West Road garage).
This two-month lull is almost certainly over now that Tulane and Loyola are both back in school, said Roger Pinac, UP captain.
“Whenever you have more people, you’re going to have more crime.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean more violent crime. The violent crimes are in pockets,” he said.
These pockets, he said, are usually in areas with an already high crime rate and an established drug trade.
Pinac stressed, however, that UP isn’t trying to minimize the violent crime that happens around the city. “We’re always concerned about it,” he said.
Theft is a more common problem here on campus, he added.
Last spring offered several high-profile examples of theft at Loyola, between the three SUVs stolen out of the Freret Street garage and the numerous reports of theft in different Danna Center offices.
The Danna Center thief (or thieves) is still at large.
“That was a tough one,” said UP Chief Patrick Bailey, adding that some locks were changed after those thefts as a precaution.
As for the Freret Street garage, more cameras are in place now to monitor who comes and goes.
Although UP heightened patrols of the garage after the thefts, they’ll scale back those patrols this fall.
“You have to look at allocating resources,” Pinac said.
Although the SUV thefts last spring represented a spike for Loyola, they were also part of a larger car theft spike across the city, the captain added.
According to Pinac, since that spike, New Orleans police have broken up some of the groups that were stealing cars.
Another change this year is UP officers’ status as commissioned New Orleans police. While UP was already authorized by state police to patrol the streets around Loyola, the NOPD commission, enacted in April, further extends UP’s jurisdiction. Now commissioned UP officers can act as NOPD officers off campus.
However, Pinac said, “We’ve got our own house to take care of, and that’s our number one function.”
While UP says it doesn’t have the resources to patrol the surrounding neighborhood, UP could nevertheless extend its patrol to a nearby street to increase the visibility of police presence if a crime rash made it necessary.
Catherine Cotton can be reached at [email protected].
