The William J. Fischer Housing Development, better known as the Fischer Projects, was a housing project in Algiers, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It was known notoriously for a series of high-profile murders in the 1970s and 1980s. It was also the last conventional public housing development constructed in New Orleans and originally consisted of a 13-floor high-rise and fourteen 3-floor units. The area has been undergoing redevelopment since about 2004 and currently none of the original low-rise buildings remain. The development is located along Whitney Avenue in the Algiers area of the city's west bank, which is part of the 15th Ward and is named for William J. Fischer who served as chairman of HANO in the 1950s. The property is now converted to a small low-income housing development.
History
The Fischer Housing Projects was constructed in January 1964 and opened in 1965 on of land adjacent to the Mississippi River Bridge and its approach roads. The development was isolated from other West Bank communities by the bridge, the Donner Canal and a Southern Pacific Railroad line. The 14 low-rise buildings were built in long parallel lines and positioned using the scattered site method resulting in large park areas covering approximately 60% of the site. A 13-story high-rise building was constructed in 1966 and served as housing for the elderly. Upon completion of the high-rise, the development had a total of 1002 units. The development also included Murray Henderson Elementary School, constructed in 1965 and William J. Fischer Elementary School which opened in 1967. Over the years, the development became rundown and saw a rise in violent crime similar to other public housing developments in New Orleans and around the country. The Fischer Projects made national headlines in the news in 1980 when a police officer was murdered. In retaliation of the murdered officer, four black men were killed in a raid by officers.
Crime problems
The Fischer housing projects has been notorious for violence since the 1970s. In the early 1980s police brutality between the New Orleans Police Department and Fischer residents grew to concern after police officer Gregory Neupert was killed by a sniper while patrolling the project at night. The violent police response to Neupert's killing led to the federal indictment of seven officers. They would be known as the "Algiers 7." After the officers indictment, policemen were afraid to enter back into the project in fear of being killed. A sniper set uptop the Fischer high-rise building and regularly fired at police passing.
In May 1989 a gunman sprayed a crowd with bullets in a courtyard in the Fischer killing a man and wounding 4 others. The next month a veteran police officer who was on a stakeout in the project, narrowly escaped serious injury when a gunman riddled the officer's van with bullets, police said. Officer Gary Dewey, was showered with broken glass and possible metal fragments at 9:38 p.m. in what appeared to be an attempt to kill him. Crime was so ferocious in the Fischer to where The Regional Transit Authority had to discontinue nighttime service through Fischer and along Whitney Avenue after several buses were shot at or had bricks and rocks thrown at them. In May 1991 one person was killed and five were wounded in a shooting spree in the project. The shootings had occurred a couple hundred yards from Fischer Elementary School. The most famous murders of the Fischer Projects were the murders of nursing student Jo Ellen Smith, Claudette McGowan and her eight-year-old child, and the murder of Officer Gregory Neupert.
1990 crime crackdown
In the summer of 1990 the police arrested 18 people and seized two machine guns as part of a crackdown on crime in the Fischer housing project. Police beefed up patrols in the project since the end of August 1990 to curtail drug dealing and violence. Marked and unmarked patrol cars spent eight to nine hours twice weekly in the 1,500-unit complex instead of the occasional drive-through they use to do the monitor drug dealing.