Uniform Crime Report (UCR) crime in New Orleans tends to be seasonal. It’s usually slow in the first quarter, a little higher in the second quarter and highest over the last six months of the year.

We’re halfway through the third quarter of 2016 now and that’s essentially what has started happening in New Orleans. To see this I charted all Calls for Service by week for 36 UCR-type calls. I included calls that were marked ‘Gone on Arrival’ and ‘Report to Follow’ to avoid being biased by response times.

It might be a little hard to read (save the picture to open it bigger), but the bottom row shows the number of UCR calls per week through the week from August 5-11. The worst week was Mardi Gras week which featured the most auto thefts, pickpockets and thefts in 2016. The second worst week was last week which had the second most thefts, vehicle burglaries, armed robberies with a gun, and aggravated assaults.

Overall, crime remains about 5 percent ahead of last year’s pace which is where it has been for the last few months. Crime jumped significantly in the fourth quarter of 2015. While some increase in crime over the last five months of the year is to be expected, hopefully New Orleans can avoid the big rise the city experienced around the time last year.