MURDER BEAT

Nearly a third of all killings this year have occurred in the 5th District,
an area that includes most of the 9th Ward. Police there have started
cracking down on even the smallest offenses, hoping to interrupt the cycle
of violence before it escalates.

Dressed in midnight blue military fatigues, the "jump-out boys" crept
cautiously toward the yellow shotgun house, guns drawn, ready for battle,
should it come to that, as they went about the business of taking another
criminal suspect out of circulation.

Problem No. 1: A bunch of kids. As bad luck would have it, the children
were stopped on their bikes, precisely in front of the targeted Forstall
Street home. Eyeing the children askance, Sgt. Lawrence Jones, a 5th
District task force supervisor, shooed the youngsters on their way with the
concern of a father, admonishing them it was long since time to get home.
With that, Jones returned his attention to the potentially violent task at
hand: making an arrest in connection with an armed robbery and as a
possible suspect in a murder. He then knocked on the door.

Problem No. 2: The man wasn't home.

In another era, the task force officers might have left it at that, turned
on their heels and headed off in search of the next wanted subject.

But police work has become a wall-to-wall operation these days. The yellow
house held other interesting characters, and the squad ran computer checks
on every one of them. The effort was rewarded with the discovery that a man
and a woman in the house were wanted for failure to appear in court,
relatively minor offenses, but both were taken into the squad car for a
trip to Central Lockup.

Reholstering their guns, the officers returned to their cars to continue
prowling the streets of the Lower 9th Ward, but not without leaving a
cellular phone number and orders that the original suspect call.

It doesn't always work, but before the end of the night the man was on the
phone with an officer. A short time later, he was in custody.

For Jones and his officers, it was a good night.

"We are identifying crime and we are trying our best to stop it," Jones
said. "I try to out-think the bad guy. Sometimes you win and sometimes you
lose."

And so it goes as the 5th District, which includes all of the 9th Ward and
some of the city's roughest neighborhoods, fights its distinction as the
city's most violent this year.

Overall, the 5th has been winning its battle. Crime is down in many
categories, but up this year in two of the most menacing: armed robbery and
murder.

Of the 149 slayings recorded in the city so far this year, 42 have been in
the 5th, a mid-year total equal to all of the district's murders in 2002.
Half of them remain open cases.

The statistic galls the 5th's commander, Capt. Lawrence Weathersby, and it
depresses the men and women who work for him.

"For these officers to go out there and give it their all and to have a
murder pop up on them, it's almost like it's unfair," Weathersby said.
"Every time there's a murder, we have to re-encourage them. We have lost
some battles, but we are going to win the war."

It's largely a war that has evolved. In a philosophical shift that has
revolutionized police work in New Orleans and many other big cities, cops
no longer just concentrate on the most lurid murders, the biggest drug
deals. Instead, they strike against the culture of violence and
lawlessness, striving for a zero-tolerance approach to criminality in all
its forms.

Hence, the interest in minor bench warrants for a failure to show up in
court. Another manifestation of the approach is the attention paid to
abandoned cars and other signals that a neighborhood is underpatrolled.
Instead of simply monitoring drug markets with an eye to making an
occasional arrest, police have begun routing dealers and users alike as a
way to reassert the force of law over street corner casbahs that had become
an accepted part of the landscape.

In two controversial moves, the 5th has begun busting up unauthorized block
parties and second-line parades, with the anticipation that they may turn
violent.

But while the police are becoming wilier crime-fighters, the killers also
are more calculating.

"They are walking up in many cases and shooting one another at point-blank
range," said Weathersby, whose district has recorded two separate double
murders and one triple slaying this year.

The 5th's most public loss so far this year was the double murder on May 15
of Keisha Robinson, 29, and Thomas "Papa Bear" Miller, 56. The couple were
gunned down about noon while parking in front of their Pauger Street home.
The execution-style slaying followed Robinson's testimony before a grand
jury as an eyewitness to the murder of her younger brother in March.

"That was a tough one. We thought we were just turning the corner on the
murder problem," Weathersby said. "Our next spree started with that double
murder."

Identifying the killers is not the problem, say 5th District detectives.
Indeed, they believe they know who is responsible for every murder
currently under investigation. The problem, without greater assistance from
the public, is making the case.

Many murder victims were earlier targets of violence. But rather than
cooperate with police and finger their assailants, they nurse dreams of
exacting revenge on the streets and wind up getting killed in the process,
police say.

In other cases, witnesses hesitate coming forward for fear of retaliation.
The Robinson and Miller slayings didn't help. The killings provoked
soul-searching about the adequacy of the parish's witness-protection
program, though authorities say Robinson had turned down an offer to
participate in it.

Drug-related crimes

If it's any solace to law-abiding citizens, the killing in the 5th District
is largely confined to the criminal class, drug dealers in particular,
police point out.

"Most of my victims have had several arrests," said Lt. Bruce Adams, the
assistant district commander. "In the 5th District, we've only had three
victims that were not involved in criminal activity at the time of their
deaths."

The remaining victims had backgrounds that made them potential targets. In
most instances, drugs or drug paraphernalia were found nearby, police said.

Police also are finding that the victims knew their days were numbered, but
chose not to come to police. In many cases, their deaths appear to be
clear-cut acts of retaliation over perceived slights, Adams said.

Gunmen are following their victims, tracking their moves and schedules for
months. Then, within a matter of seconds, they ambush their victims at a
vulnerable moment and slip back out of sight before police arrive.

It makes policing the district a never-ending challenge, said Deputy Chief
Warren Riley, who once served as 5th District commander.

"On a weekly basis, there were probably 30 felons released into that
community on probation or parole," Riley said. "As quick as we cleared up
an area, we had another group of people coming in."

Neighborhoods in the district also have the reputation of being the spot to
go to buy drugs, officers say. As soon as one major drug dealer is
arrested, another springs up to take his place, Riley said.

"That's the business," Riley said. "It's location, location, location."

In response, the district is flooding drug-infested areas -- the junction
of Forstall and Royal streets, for example -- with task force and Special
Operations officers to scare off the drug dealers.

The intersection was dead late one June evening. Men loitering near the
intersection eyed police suspiciously as squad cars cruised the area.

At another drug-dealing nexus, men dressed in white T-shirts and blue jeans
quickly signaled to each other and vanished as officers entered the block.

The 5th District's task force is part of a citywide task force that is
flooding neighborhoods throught the city most prone to murder with officers
on proactive patrols. Uniformed and plainclothes officers work into early
morning hours in the 1st, 3rd and 5th districts, crossing a 7-mile swath of
New Orleans that spans Orleans and Elysian Fields avenues and extends past
Franklin Avenue.

While the task force rousts felons and stumbles upon others who are wanted
during routine traffic stops, it also augments the work of police officers
specializing in crimes such as armed robbery, narcotics and homicide.

While cutting the murder rate tops the district's crime-fighting agenda, no
infraction is too trivial to attract the attention of 5th District police.
Stopping a motorist for driving with one headlight or not wearing a
seatbelt often leads to the discovery of a person wanted for larger crimes,
officers said.

On one recent night, task force officers checked license plates to make
sure that they matched the automobiles people were driving. One man, who
was stopped because he was driving with an expired temporary tag, was taken
to jail after he failed to produce proof of insurance or a valid driver's
license.

"I'm a good person," the man told an officer as he was led to a squad car.
"You can ask my mama."

But the officer said he had no way of knowing what type of person the man
was without proper identification.

In many cases, officers have removed drugs, guns and felony suspects from
the streets because of the stops. An average of about 300 arrests a week
are being made in the district.

While task force officers are out searching for suspects and patrolling
high crime and drug areas, patrol officers are expected to respond to the
complaints dispatched to the station. COPS, the city's community-oriented
officers, handle calls in the Florida public housing complex. When the
Desire public housing complex reopens, the unit will handle calls there, too.

The goal is to resolve all complaints within 48 hours. Problems that can't
be resolved within two days are given to specialized squads, which have
more time to to investigate crimes such as prostitution and drug rings.

The district is also trying to improve the quality of life by cleaning up
trash, abandoned furniture and cars. "All of those things, believe it or
not, affect the murder rate," Weathersby said.

Challenging job

While his officers have been out on the front lines responding to an
average of two murders a week, Weathersby has been working behind the
scenes with Lt. Adams, his assistant commander, examining crimes and crime
patterns in the district and dispatching officers to troubled neighborhoods.

With the exception of murder, overall crime is down by 20 percent in the
district, a credit to the hard work of his officers, Weathersby said.

The district encompasses some of the city's rougher neighborhoods along
with some of its most rapidly gentrifying, including the upper and Lower
9th Ward, parts of the 7th and 8th wards, a portion of the Faubourg
Marigny, Bywater, a slice of Gentilly and the Florida and Desire public
housing complexes.

It's familiar terrain for Weathersby, who grew up in the Lower 9th Ward and
started his career almost 20 years ago in the 5th District as a patrolman.

"I know the 5th. I've patrolled the 5th," Weathersby said. "I've seen the
quality of life deteriorate from (when I was) a child to now. I want to
have a hand in getting it back to where it used to be."

The deterioration had not spared the police force itself. Over the past
three years, about 60 5th District officers had left for higher-paying jobs
with other agencies.

But a decision by Weathersby to run off underperforming officers seemed to
motivate the 148 men and women who remained under his command, 114 of whom
work regular patrol shifts. As a result of the personnel changes , he said,
fewer people are calling in sick to work. More officers are out on the
street fighting crime and the 5th has emerged as a district that officers
want to work in, not escape.

"I'm back home," said Sgt. Derek Frick, who volunteered to come back to the
5th District. "I love being in the 5th. It's where I grew up. A lot of my
people are here. It's an opportunity for me to give back what they gave me."

Fighting for trust

Although he's won the trust of his officers, Weathersby said getting the
trust of district residents has been more difficult.

Residents have long been distrustful of police and still talk about the
1994 slaying of Kim Groves. Groves was killed by a hitman hired by former
New Orleans police officer Len Davis after she filed a brutality complaint
against him. Davis is serving a life sentence in federal prison.

"You have a lot of people down here who still don't trust police,"
Weathersby said. "While they want police protection, they don't want to be
policed."

The love-hate relationship was apparent the evening task force officers
searched for a man wanted for armed robbery in the 1700 block of Forstall
Street. Many adults walked down the street to get a closer look at what was
taking place in front of the home and scowled at the officers surrounding
the house.

But as a counterweight to that apathy and distrust, the police have learned
to count on pockets of supporters who act as eyes and ears for the
district, Weathersby said.

Among that number is Bobby Brown, a Lower 9th Ward community activist.
Brown, along with several other 5th District residents, has worked with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to secure federal money to help provide
overtime pay for a new squad of officers to patrol the Lower 9th Ward from
11 p.m. to 7 a.m. The initiative began in May.

Until the initiative started, the police substation in the Lower 9th Ward
was unmanned overnight and all calls for service were handled from the main
station on North Claiborne Avenue.

"A lot of dope dealing goes on at that time of night," said Brown, who
hopes the new initiative puts an end to the activity. "The crackheads are
asleep all day and they walk all night."

More officers are still needed, said Linda Bowie, whose 11-year-old
grandson and two other children had their bikes stolen one block away from
her home on Feliciana Street in June.

"This child got choked and thrown off his bike one block away from his
home," Bowie said.

Bowie said she sees police only when there's a murder in her neighborhood.

"In this area, we don't have enough police officers," she said, adding that
police can barely keep up with the murders, let alone try to protect a
little boy and his bike. "I know. I hear the gunshots."

Determined to prevail

In time, officers are hoping the gunfire will cease. And so far this month,
the district has not recorded a murder.

Cases are being worked daily. And slowly, with the public's help, the
criminals that make life miserable for the majority of the 5th's residents
are being taken off the streets.

If Sgt. Jones and his jump-out boys have anything to do with it, more
arrests are soon to come.

"We will not give up until we find them," he said, before jumping out of
his squad car to question a suspect during a traffic stop.