Thousands of residents here, mostly whites, marched through downtown on Thursday in a show of anger over recent killings and local officials' ineffective response to them.
Converging on City Hall, the crowd packed the plaza fronting the building, with many marchers holding signs that denounced Mayor Ray Nagin, his police chief and the local district attorney as "incompetent," "failures" or worse, and demanding their resignations.
The police estimated the crowd at 5,000, a big turnout in a city where such large-scale mobilization is unusual.
It was a striking demonstration of the frustration coursing through New Orleans as residents endure one more challenge -- at least 13 killings in two weeks, including those of a popular musician and a well-known filmmaker -- after all the misery inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Yet it also showed the community's deep division. Nearly all the demonstrators were white, even though New Orleans is mostly black, the victims of the violence have mostly been black and the perpetrators are believed to have been black, too.
Members of the crowd included homemakers from the Uptown neighborhood, bohemians from the Faubourg Marigny section, small business owners from the French Quarter and executives and lawyers from the Central Business District.
The monochrome crowd was a surprise to many and an unpromising augury for any possible resolution of the city's crime crisis. Law enforcement officials have for years spoken of mute circles of witnesses around crime scenes in largely black neighborhoods here.
John Raphael, a local black pastor who fired up the crowd during the rally, said afterward: "There is a lot of hopelessness on the street, in the black community. People are living in fear."
"To step out," Raphael added, "people just feel they would make themselves vulnerable."
Some whites suggested that many blacks holding low-paying jobs would not have been permitted to leave work to attend the demonstration.
Earlier, Nagin stood by silently as Raphael gave emotional voice to the crowd's discontent.
"We have trod through streets soaked with the blood of our neighbors and siblings, to declare our dissatisfaction," the pastor called out to the crowd.
Pursued by catcalls, Nagin ducked into City Hall with his entourage when the rally ended.
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