Proactive policing can be defined as they types of self-initiated activities police can take when they are not responding to Calls for Service. One of the effects of significantly reduced manpower in New Orleans has been a drop in several incident types that can be used to define NOPD’s level of proactive policing. These measures are: drug violations, curfew violations, suspicious person stops, drunk driving stops and illegal gun violations.

As of the end of August all of these measures are on pace to be down between 33 percent and 86 percent relative to their totals in 2012. Illegal possession of a firearm incidents are on pace for a slight rebound in 2016 relative to 2015’s total but all the other measures are set to decline again in 2016.

Here’s how they stack up.

Year Drug Violation Curfew Violation Suspicious Person Drunk Driving Illegal Gun
2012 3,396 1,451 28,514 1,274 387
2013 3,291 824 22,666 1,120 325
2014 2,629 376 18,937 1,190 250
2015 2,252 277 17,026 787 236
2016* 2,086 206 16,354 572 258
Change 2012-2016 -38.6% -85.8% -42.7% -55.1% -33.3%
* Pace as of 8/30/2016

The drop in proactive policing has been steady since 2012 as seen in the below graph. This graph measures the rolling number of incidents over 365 days since the start of 2013 relative to the number of each incident type in 2012. Curfew violations lead the way with an 86 percent drop in under four years.