Lake Charles is not immune to the uptick in crime rates that are being reported around the nation but it remains a blessed city nonetheless, said Police Chief Shawn Caldwell.

“There is an anomaly going on, and I believe it’s happening across the country, and that’s an increase in violent crimes,” Caldwell told members of the Kiwanis Club of Downtown Lake Charles this week. “A large majority of that increase is because of our youth. Any child that we reach and we can prevent them from becoming involved in criminal activities, much less crimes of violence, is certainly a success story.”

Caldwell —who has served as chief since 2019 — said over the past 10 years, Lake Charles Police have investigated 91 homicides. Of those, all but six cases have been solved.

“That’s a 93 percent solve rate and I am personally pretty proud to be part of the Lake Charles Police Department, which has such a successful solve rate,” he said. “Across the nation, that rate is around 50 percent. Louisiana’s average solve rate is about 70 percent.”

Caldwell said the majority of violence crimes, in his experience, are related to drug transactions.

“Because of the heinous nature of that business — and all the weapons involved — they resort to violence,” he said. “You used to be able to say, with a fair amount of confidence, that the majority of murder victims had an association with the perpetrator — it could have been an estranged spouse, it could have been players in a drug deal, it wasn’t just random acts of violence. What has become scary over the past couple of years, at least here locally, is that the victim just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He said most of these cases involve gun violence — and most of the guns are stolen.

“Most of these stolen guns come from someone who lawfully possessed and owned a weapon and then left it in their vehicle and perhaps didn’t lock their vehicle or didn’t have the weapon concealed and somebody came along and opened their car and removed that gun and used it in a violent manner,” he said. “This happens every day, every night, everywhere across the country and we are not immune to it. We have people that will go around, pull on car doors and if one of them opens up they are going searching, and if they find a gun they’re going to take it. If they see a gun, they’re going to break a window.”

Caldwell said he is a proponent of responsible gun ownership, but encourages everyone he comes in contact with to lock their vehicles and lock up their weapons.

Fentanyl awareness

The United States is facing its deadliest year ever for drug overdoses, a trend blamed on the surge of powerful synthetic fentanyl in the nation’s illicit drug supply.

“Imagine one grain of rice cut up into 10 equal sections,” Caldwell said. “To someone who hasn’t built a tolerance for fentanyl, any one of those 10 pieces of rice can kill you. That’s how small of an amount it takes.”

Caldwell said there was a time when officers would sometimes find heroin laced with fentanyl; sometimes cocaine.

“This has grown legs so that every single possible drug now has the potential of being laced with fentanyl,” he said. “From marijuana to whatever pill is today’s fashion can now have it because (drug dealers) have pill presses — a machine they can formulate whatever concoction they would like and put whatever type of drug they want in it, lace that drug with fentanyl, run it through a press and make it look like whatever you want to buy on the street.”

Caldwell said drug users purchasing drugs on the streets are “playing Russian roulette.”

“It’s scary that it’s out there and it’s scary that people roll the dice with this,” he said.

He said fentanyl-related overdoses in Lake Charles are on the rise.

“Five years ago, we didn’t hear much about it. We knew of it — but that was around Boston and New York. You didn’t have it so much here. We didn’t even carry Narcan (which can be given for an opioid overdose in an emergency situation). Now, it’s here. We carry Narcan, firemen carry it, ambulances carry it. In fact, Narcan was once considered drug paraphernalia.”

Caldwell said frequent drug users will eventually stop experiencing the high generated during their first initial uses and seek out fentanyl-mixed drugs to reach a “super ride.”

“The drug dealers cut fentanyl and mix it in there because it’s the ‘good stuff,’ which may work for the user who has built up a tolerance, but for the new user, they’re dead. A drug dealer wants the new designer, super highfalutin drug to sell and he’s not wearing a lab coat in some room with fancy fans making sure everything is right. This guy is making it to sell on the streets. And it only takes a milligram of the stuff to make it fatal.”

Community support

Caldwell said the only way to end the gun violence and the drug use is for the community to stop accepting that this is normal.

“Every time I talk about this kind of stuff, no one is surprised,” he said. “We’ve all come to accept it. We’ve come to accept that somewhere in America some kids are going to get shot while at school. We’ve come to accept that. It’s our fault. We should not accept it.”

Lake Charles Police is not going to accept it or allow it here, he said. Society shouldn’t, either.

“Step No. 1 is for us to change as a society,” he said. “That’s what I believe in my heart. When it becomes not accepted by us, when it appalls us that these things are going on in our community, and we start taking steps to change that — until that happens, it won’t stop.”

Caldwell said what will help in that endeavor is maintaining the trust that has be built between his officers and the community they serve.

“From a law enforcement perspective, Lake Charles is blessed,” he said. “I believe the majority of our population trusts us and trust that we are going to do the right thing. I’m grateful for that and I cherish that and I want to embrace it, but you have to continue it, you have to work on it, we can’t lose that. If we lose that, we all lose.