Rant: Crime in Shreveport and What We Can Do About It

Do you get alerts on your phone from the local news stations? I do and it seems like every time you pick up your phone for the last several months there's a report of another shooting in Shreveport. Am I the only one out there that thinks enough is enough?

To be totally transparent, I live in Bossier Parish personally. Why? Bossier doesn't have near the amount of violent crime that Caddo does. I don't have any stats to back that up other than watching the nightly news, but I'm pretty sure my opinion is widely held by others in our community.

So what can we do about it? The first answer is we need to pray for our city. I happen to enjoy working in Shreveport but no one wants to feel unsafe in their own home.

What else can we do? I think we need to wholeheartedly support law enforcement. Lately, the news has been reporting that the Shreveport Police department is losing people left and right to other agencies. Why? First of all the pay. We need to pay the people working to keep us safe. Maybe we can use the funds from all of the people who were over billed for their water. While we're at it, these folks need the best equipment available.

I found an article online that says Shreveport is only safer than 3%  of the cities in the country. Wrap your head around that. That means 97% of cities in the United States are safer than our home. Pathetic when you think about it. Even more, it's scary as hell.

So I did a little research on what we, as citizens of northwest Louisiana, can do to help make Shreveport safe. After all, even if you don't live within city limits, it's the cultural and business hub for our region.

It turns out there are things we can do. Let's make sure there are positive things for our youth to do. Clean up your neighborhood and get involved in a neighborhood watch. You can also volunteer, tutor children, support education efforts and work to provide recourse for victims of crime.

For a full list of things you can do to help, click here.

I know we didn't get into the mess overnight and we certainly won't fix our problems overnight either. But we can work to make the situation better. Let's get busy Shreveport!