Culture of New Orleans Bureau of Justice Statistics from FBI Uniform Crime Reports, NOLA.com, and criminologist Dr.Peter Scharf { After Hurricane Katrina (2005), news media attention focused on the reduced violent-crime rate following the exodus of many New Orleanians. That trend began to reverse itself as people returned to the city, although calculating the homicide rate remained difficult when no authoritative source could cite a total population figure. In 2003, most victims in New Orleans were killed within three months of their last arrest. The homicide rate for the New Orleans metropolitan statistical area, which includes the suburbs, was 24.4 per 100,000 in 2002.
Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans area hospitals that were flooded or damaged. Reports from the Methodist Hospital indicated that people were dying of dehydration and exhaustion while the staff worked unendingly in horrendous conditions. The first floor of the hospital flooded and the dead were stacked in a second floor operating room. Patients requiring ventilators were kept alive with hand-powered resuscitation bags. Among the many hospitals shut down by damage related to the hurricane was the public hospital serving New Orleans, Charity Hospital, which was also the only trauma center serving that region. The destruction of the hospital's structure has forced the continued closure as