Saturday, April 3, 2021

Dystopian Shreveport: What are the Answers to Survival?

Living in Shreveport these days is turning into some kind of twisted, dystopian experience. It is no exaggeration to note that shootings occur every single day in this city, sometimes multiple times, and often with injuries or fatalities. It is tragic anytime a life is lost to this senseless violence but it seems even more so when an innocent life, or a beautiful child, is lost.

And we accept this. 

On March 20, 2021, five-year old Mya Patel was killed when she was hit by a stray bullet.

Wednesday, March 24, social media reflected multiple audio recordings of shots fired early in the evening, shots I heard clearly while reading in my bedroom.

March 30, a woman a few blocks from me was shot in the hip; luckily she is okay.

March 31, Xavier Griffin, 19 years old, shot and killed in the Queensborogh neighborhood. Nineteen years old.

Last night, April 2, one was killed and others injured in multiple shootings.

It is literally every single day or night - doesn't matter what time -- and we are doing nothing about this. You can check the Caddo 911 Active Emergency Events page and almost every single time you'll see a shots fired or a shootings call, and those don't include the ones that never make it to the page or are "holding," waiting for available officers. 

We are doing nothing about it.

"But, what can we do?!"  I hear you. I don't have those answers. My layman's opinion would be to first work through the local elections process to elect leaders tough on crime, willing to enforce penalties on criminals. From the mayor, to the District Attorney, to the city council and the parish commission, we need support. 

We need police officers and the money to pay them. Shreveport ranks woefully low in police pay and our officers do not stay. We need the best and the brightest, willing to work hard for good pay.

We need jobs. We need businesses to come here to grow the tax base and to provide employment. We need all levels of jobs, from the trades to the administrative. We can't continue to depend simply on service industry jobs as our main employers. 

Businesses won't come without decent infrastructure. Our streets are literally crumbling, our water system is collapsing (not to mention their mismanaged billing practices), and the city is covered in trash, litter, and empty buildings. 

We need a vibrant downtown. The downtown area is trying: there are some places to eat, a few renovated buildings for apartments, you can see a movie, look at buildings. Many people avoid downtown due to safety issues. Maybe we need bicycle or mounted units there. Maybe we need more options for our large homeless population on the streets there. 

We need so many things. Old time Shreveporters often speak of the "good ol' days" when we had sports teams like The Shreveport Captains, where families could go enjoy a game on a pretty afternoon or evening. Now, our baseball stadium is empty, crumbling, and filled with bats and toxic guano.

Neil Johnson postcard photo.

For the most part, unless you want to drink or gamble, there is not much for families to do here. There are a few things...SciPort is downtown, and the Aquarium. What else? Someone help me. I know I'm forgetting something -- my kids are grown.

Before anything else happens, safety has got to be addressed. Perhaps I am alone in my concern. Perhaps I am in the minority when I balk at going to Betty Virginia Park to walk or spend an afternoon outside. Maybe I'm the only one who is constantly on guard when I walk my neighborhood.  Maybe nobody else has started taking their dogs out at night earlier, or in the backyard rather than the front yard. Maybe nobody else has installed surveillance cameras around their home. Maybe I'm the only one much more cautious about locking their car at night. Maybe nobody else has had packages stolen off their front porch. 

Maybe all this is just my perception.

I long to see a thriving Shreveport with businesses like when we had Western Electric, General Motors, Kast Metals, Libby Glass, Poulan WeedEater, to name a few. The Captains played baseball in their new stadium and people sat in the beer garden eating hot dogs and sipping nickel beer. New malls and shopping centers dotted the city, and parks were growing. People ate at local restaurants, like Sansone's, Brocato's, Abe's, Monsour's, The Centenary Oyster House, George's, and Fertitta's, to name a few. Downtown was bustling with department stores like Selber's, Hearne's, Rubensteins, and Palais Royal. You could grab lunch at a nice, fancy place downtown or a quick, inexpensive burger place. You felt safe. You could park in the Selber's parking garage and not worry about your car or about getting panhandled or mugged. Shreve Square was hopping on weekend nights: great bands in multiple clubs, people walking between them, great restaurants, good times.

Have you seen the building where The Sportspage or Humphrees used to be?

Humpfrees, 2021. 


We could reminisce about the glory days forever, and everybody knows times change and nothing stays the same, but the truth is, other cities adapt better than we have. When you travel, when you leave the city and see other places, even places within say a three hour radius, it is stunning to see the difference. 

It's possible to have a clean city with happy people. But Shreveport feels like a city with a cloud of gloom over it. We can talk it up and pretend to be positive. I know people will jump on me and say that it's the negative people like me that keeps it down. "If you hate it here so much, why don't you leave!?" I've heard it. 

The answer is I'd like to be part of a solution, not stick my head in the sand and pretend like it's great. It's not great. Listen to that gunfire every night and tell me how great that is.

So. What's the solution. What do we do, Shreveport? What are the answers?



3 comments:

Hutch said...

What does Shreveport need to do? It all starts with money ans this town Needs to attract business and employers. Then it can generate ya revenue to do the things it needs to do like stricter law enforcement, more police infrastructure repair etc.
That's what needs to be done
But it hasn't been done since the oil biz died in the 80s and Bill Hanna was mayor. It won't happen now because of big governments socialist direction and the mollineal generations willingness to do nothing and accept it.

Anonymous said...

President Biden needs to enact gun control. Guns are the problem.

Anonymous said...

Crusty Old TV Tech here again.

You are right to ask "what is to be done?". First, identify the problem, then identify the root cause, and last, potential solutions. What is the problem? Out of control crime, and/or decline in civil society in Shreveport, it would seem. What is the root cause? Ah, this is where we get into supposition, theory, etc. I would start with the last era where civility was acknowledged to exist (say, roughly the mid-60's) and ask what has changed since then. Well, for one, activist groups forced a change in city government from the Commission form (developed after the 1900 Galveston hurricane for its responsiveness and efficiency) to the strong Mayor/Council form (hallmarked by Tammany in New York and ward healers in Chicago, amongst others). All the activist agitation changed the Shreveport we grew up in to the Shreveport of 2021 in the space of say 50 years. How did it happen? Slowly (1960's-1980's), and then all at once (2000's). The corruption eminating from City Hall has infected much of civil society, and while greasing palms downtown, the pols took their eyes off the ball of business, allowing United Gas to be taken over by Zapata in a highly leveraged sleazy buyout, and dismembered and dissipated. Same with Texas Eastern's gas pipeline division, GMAD Shreveport, and many others. Western Electric was inevitible with the changes in the phone business, nothing really to be done to keep the plant operating. But, the sleaze and graft from downtown surely did not help get someone else to replace them. What is to be done? I can't help with that one, city hall is too far gone to "fix", it will take concerted efforts to undo the damage the activists did in the 70's and return to a sane model of municipal government.