If you are black between the ages of 15 to 34, you are more likely to die of a homicide than of a disease or an accident

Tania Francois:

That's according to a recent report by the Violence Policy Center out of Washington DC.

They say based on numbers in 2004, Louisiana ranked second in the nation for homicides among African-Americans.

Rich Arnold, Criminal Justice Professor at LSUS says, "We can't just turn around and blame this on local law enforcement, we can't blame it on the economy, this is long term so we need to think long term.

In Shreveport just last year, there were 30 homicides. Twenty-eight were black victims, two were white.

Of the suspects captured, 24 were black one was white.

Kacee Hargrave with the Shreveport Police Department says, "We had a record number of low homicides last year we only had 30 if I remember correctly the last time we had 30 was like 1987 so when we're talking about the numbers they're relatively low compared to previous years."

Across Louisiana, 85 percent of homicides were gun related. Of those, 83 percent were by someone the victim knew.

Arnold says, "If you look at our population in this state we have a large number of black population and the other thing that comes to mind in all of this is recognizing that hand guns were most frequently used and this is a gun toting society that we live in."

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