New Orleans had just ended 2014 with its lowest murder total of the last four decades. But just 12 hours into 2015, a father and son were working on a pickup truck outside the family's Gentilly home when neighbors reported hearing what they thought were fireworks.

The sound they heard came from gunfire sprayed in the pair's direction. The deaths of Desmond Lange Sr., 64, and his 42-year-old son, Desmond Lange Jr., marked the first and second murders of the year.

By mid-year, with New Orleans reaching 100 murders nearly two months earlier than the previous two years, the city's highly touted streak of declining homicides appeared to be coming to an end.

Even with a spike in bloodshed the final week leading up to 2016 - six dead in the past seven days - the number of New Orleans murders still landed among one of the lowest totals of the last 25 years.

Mothers and fathers, the elderly and the unborn - 164 lives were lost to violence in 2015. While the total is a far cry from the 190-plus figure predicted in July, it represents a 9 percent increase from last year's 150.

- and -

The Police Department puts 2015's tally at 165, one more than NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. That's because the police include the 2005 fatal shooting by an officer of Henry Glover, whose death was not classified by the coroner's office as a homicide until 2015.

Police connect the rise in murders to an increase in personal violence, one that requires concerted effort by multiple parties, some outside criminal justice system, to address.

Experts will keep a close eye on homicides and other violent crimes next year to see if the bump in 2015 was a blip on the radar or part of a more disturbing trend reversal. Right now, experts say, it's too soon to tell.

"What people really want to know is, 'Are they on the right track?' said Peter Scharf, a criminologist with LSU Public Health. "And my answer is, I'm not sure."

2015 data

Scharf, who made the mid-year prediction of 185-to-190 total homicides, expressed relief that "the worst case didn't happen." He added, "But neither did the good case."

The plan was to sustain a reduction in homicides, Scharf said, and that didn't happen, either.  Concentrated efforts to ride the reduction trend is how places like New York City dropped its number of murders from around 2,260 in 1990 to this year's total of about 350, he said.

Rafael C. Goyeneche III, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, noted although "you never want to see murders go up," a small variation, up or down, "may be natural."

Despite the rise in homicides and other violent crimes, overall crime is down, according to early projections from the New Orleans Police Department.

Crimes of all types decreased by 7 percent from 2014 -- a total derived from an 8 percent decrease in property crimes and a 2 percent increase in violent crime, early projections indicate. Homicides, experts note, comprise less than 1 percent of overall crime.

Goyeneche warned, however, that the Uniform Crime Reporting data cited by NOPD might not capture the reality of all crime in New Orleans.

NOPD's average response time of 73 minutes -- a symptom of the department's well-recorded manpower shortage -- mean officers sometimes don't get to crime scenes, especially for lower priority property crimes, in time to make an accurate or useful report, Goyeneche said.

"Property crimes where police never arrived have to be factored in," he said.

Once citizens realize the unlikelihood of a reasonable response time to catch a perpetrator, the next time they're victims of a property crime, he said, they might not bother to call police, "particularly if it's under a deductible amount in your insurance policy."

Homicides

NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison said a large number of the homicides involve situations where the victim and perpetrator know one another.

Most citizens correctly perceive that murder is generally confined to drug-related incidents and people who know each other, said Michael Cowan, the chairman of the New Orleans Crime Coalition. While that may be correct, he said, it's concerning because it can lead to a form of complacency.

"It's a loss of life, and we can't accept it, even if we feel it's unlikely that it's going to happen to us," he said.

The city saw a double-digit increase in domestic homicides, Harrison said.

Goyeneche said previous calls for service from perpetrators or victims of domestic homicides can help determine if police had an opportunity intervene to try to stop those types of deaths. In cases when a partner snaps for the first time, he said, there little law enforcement can do.

Armed robberies

Armed robberies, tend to personally affect a larger number of people, observers say, because they happened on a more frequent basis and stretch all across the city.

NOPD preliminary projections, with all but a week left in a year, show armed robberies and sexual assaults were trending up over the previous year.

"It's worrisome because it could happen to anybody, any place," said Cowan, whose organization conducts an annual NOPD citizen satisfaction survey "It typically doesn't end in people being shot or killed, the point is that it could.

Harrison attributed the uptick in armed robberies, which he said are often perpetrated by juveniles, to a number of factors -- many of them outside of the realm of law enforcement.

"It's recidivism. It's a lack of hope. It's young men not having a job opportunities, not having jobs, not having the education to even have the opportunities or the job," he said.

Often serial armed robbers strike seven or eight times, Harrison said.

He acknowledged, too, that police presence plays a role. "It could be because they don't fear consequences (or) they don't see the police at that particular moment."

Scharf said armed robberies cut across neighborhoods because they are often crimes of opportunity. Perpetrators in some cases follow the money, he said, noting the fall robberies of two Uptown restaurants and a bar, where masked men with guns held up the businesses and patrons. The same goes for gentrified neighborhoods, he said, like those in the 7

and 9

Wards.

"Gentrified folks are much less likely to shoot you dead if you rob them," Scharf said.

Moreover, New Orleans' layout is such that six violent hot spot neighborhoods are scattered all around the city.

Other crimes

The number of reported rapes through September this year went up 56 percent -- among the highest categories in rising crime, according to FBI UCR data. Year end projections from NOPD indicate an increase, as well.

Harrison attributed the jump in reported rapes to more victims coming forward, which he said was encouraging. Experts, likewise, have indicated the uptick in reported rapes indicates a willingness to see the often-unreported crimes pursued and prosecuted.

NOPD is projecting there were 252 non-fatal shootings in 2015, about a 12 percent increase from 2014.

NOPD Superintendent Harrison said group-involved shootings are down. Groups refer to more formal gangs, as well as extended family groups or neighborhood groups who engage in violent behavior.

"While they're still very much too high, it's by and large people who know one another," he said, speaking of group-related shootings and homicides.

Also trending down, preliminary NOPD projections show, was simple robberies, burglaries, thefts and auto thefts.

NOPD did not provide projections for felony drug offenses, which Goyeneche called "a major issue" for people who live in neighborhoods plagued by illegal narcotic use and sales, since violence can be a byproduct.

Manpower

Goyeneche said NOPD's lagging response times and manpower struggle has contributed to the rise in homicides and other violent crimes.

"They're not responding to crime, not because they're sitting in a donut shop, but because there's not enough officers to answer the calls for service," he said.

NOPD manpower has declined 20 percent in the last four years, from 1,424 commissioned officers in 2011 to 1,163 presently -- a figure that includes a recruit class that graduated in the last week of 2015, according to department figures.

NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble said 136 new members of NOPD began training in 2015, and 105 were lost through attrition,dismissal, death or retirement, including 14 recruits.

Goyeneche said arrests provide deterrents and get perpetrators who might reoffend off the streets. If officers can't get to a scene in enough time to interview witnesses or have a shot at catching a fleeing suspect because they're stuck on other calls, they're less likely clear a case by booking someone.

Arrests in the first six months of 2015 were down, Goyeneche said, which continues a downward trend in arrests from the last two years.

"Offenders that would have normally been apprehended... are then free to commit other felony offenses," he said.

NOPD data show approximately 83 arrests have been made in the 164 homicide cases, an arrest clearance rate of around 50 percent. FBI uniform crime reporting data show the national average homicide arrest clearance rate, based on most recent available data from 2012, was 63 percent.

Despite NOPD's intensive recruiting efforts, Scharf said, it's difficult for the department to make up for the officers it's losing to retirement, other departments and resignations for other reasons.

"You're filling a cup with a hole in it," he said.

When the recruits come on board, he said, the department is replacing experienced officers with rookies.

Cowan cautioned against blaming the crime increase on manpower issues, however, noting external factors play a role that have little to do with the New Orleans police.

External factors

When it comes to fighting crime, police are limited in what they can do to prevent crimes like murder and armed robbery, Cowan said.

"(The crimes) are responses to social conditions that the police department doesn't control, like poverty. All the police can do is deploy their resources as best as they can to catch people once they've done this and hopefully scare some people away from doing more," he said.

Other communities are farther along than New Orleans in addressing those root causes of crime, like education, substance abuse, mental health programs and initiatives that identify at-risk youth, Goyenenche said.

"We're just starting that process right now, post-Katrina," he said. But at this point, he added, the efforts are not enough to restrict the intake valve of the criminal justice system.

A legacy of poor education resources and a lack of industrial job base, in addition to dried up funding for nonprofits, contribute to crime in New Orleans, added Scharf.

"The kids who are now in these gunfights were in the 5th grade under the Orleans Parish School Board," he said, noting the education system has since then been overhauled.

Harrison, too, said police need help from schools, churches, civic groups and other groups to reach prospective offenders before they offend.

Some criminals are carjacking cars to joy ride, or committing armed robberies for money, he said, "because they can't achieve their goals by legitimate means like you or me."

Harrison echoed observers, saying more mental health and drug abuse treatment and facilities could address root cause, noting many steal to feed a drug habit.

"It's not just policing," he said of the bump in violent crime.

Consequences

Harrison said the entire criminal justice system shares a role in crime fluctuations, suggesting punishments for the cases police make arrests on and successfully investigate are too lenient.

"When it comes to gun violence, the consequences are just not harsh enough for gun offenders (and) for robbery offenders," he said. "We're seeing a number of people go to jail who are back out on the streets, and these juveniles are not fearing the consequences because they're not strong enough.

"That's a challenge for us as law enforcement, but we can't bear the whole burden of fixing the problem. It's the whole criminal justice system, and society as a whole."

Looking to 2016

Harrison said he hopes to see a reduction in all types of crime in 2016 as the department works to implement initiatives to improve police response time and grow manpower.

"The workload will be reduced because of these initiatives gaining traction," he sad, "(It) will give us more time to be preventive, put more officers out there to deter crime."

Goyenche gave credit to the citizens of New Orleans, who he believes have become "much more sophisticated" and knowledgeable about the city's crime problem, putting pressure on their leaders. People know about the delayed response times and understand its relationship to the manpower shortage, he said, and he's personally noted attendance at neighborhood crime meetings is up.

"In many respects, a lot of the politicians have recognized the public's disdain and impatience with the crime problem," he said, which forces elected leaders to make crime a part of their platform.

Scharf said he's encouraged by some of the initiatives the NOPD and finds the leadership "absolutely sincere," leading him to believe New Orleans' quality of life is on the right track, long term, regarding crime in the community. He worries, though, that the manpower problems and the resulting symptoms of it will take longer than another year to address.

"I think it's going to be an amazing place to live in another 10 years," he said. "But people get shot in the short run, not the long run."