NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Police Department, which has been plagued by corruption for decades, is pressing to finally terminate more than a decade of federal surveillance, citing lingering memories of a 1994 murder ordered by a corrupt cop and an attempted cover-up in the 2005 shooting of unarmed bystanders.
Department critics are anticipated to oppose eliminating court-ordered federal oversight at a hearing in federal court on Tuesday, highlighting worries about racial inequities in police use of force, poor treatment of sex offenses, and a lack of community participation.
The question of whether federal oversight had a meaningful impact on the NOPD is especially relevant now that a cadre of high-ranking former NOPD officers and one of the lawyers overseeing the city consent decree are in charge of managing a state-level reform plan for the Minneapolis police department in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
In 2011, a Department of Justice investigation discovered evidence of racial bias, misbehavior, and a culture of impunity inside the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). Two years later, the City of New Orleans signed “the nation’s most expansive” federal monitoring plan – a reform accord known as a consent decree — to improve the city’s police department.
NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick stated in an interview that the agency has achieved its objectives: “We’ve built that system.” If the federal judge agrees with the city and the Department of Justice’s move to terminate the consent decree issued in September, the NOPD will be subject to federal oversight for another two years.
Almost everyone agrees that the NOPD of today has undergone significant transformations. However, some renowned community activists and watchdogs claim the NOPD is still not ready to abandon federal authority.
Stella Cziment, the head of the Office of the Independent Police Monitor, a civilian-run city agency, said that while the NOPD has made significant strides in improving internal policies and leadership, it has focused too much on meeting federal benchmarks and not enough on working with community members to reshape the department.
“I think the danger of the consent decree is that we lose sight of who the true audience is supposed to be of these police reforms,” Cziment told the press. “Ultimately, the community will be serviced by the NOPD, and they must feel included and heard by the NOPD. And I cannot say now that that has been accomplished.”
In recent years, the NOPD and the City of New Orleans have faced payroll fraud claims, a high-profile corruption charge involving the mayor’s bodyguard, and a backlog of unresolved rape cases, among other issues cited by watchdogs.
Despite these ongoing challenges, Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a local anti-corruption NGO, believes federal control of the NOPD and its around 900 personnel is a “success story” — especially given the department’s past.
“Unfortunately, there will probably never be a day in any department of this size where some officers are violating the rules, some officers haven’t crossed the line,” Goyeneche told the newspaper. “But that is not going to necessarily mean that the entire department is corrupt or mismanaged.”
According to federal monitors, the consent decree should be viewed as a minimum rather than a maximum for policing in New Orleans.
The lead federal monitor, Jonathan Aronie, applauded the NOPD for enhancing its procedures, training, and auditing. He has stated that the department now produces reliable data, allowing auditors and the public to better follow policing activities and increase accountability.
“When we look at the collection of all these data, we no longer see a pattern of practice of unconstitutional conduct,” Aronie stated during a public meeting on October 28.
Racial differences in the use of force.
Many residents in a city with a Black population of slightly more than 50% have significant skepticism of the NOPD, and the department’s statistics continue to indicate worrisome inequalities. According to the city’s Office of the Independent Police Monitor, nearly 90% of all cases of police use of force last year were directed at black persons.
More than a decade earlier, the Department of Justice’s inquiry revealed similar rates of racial inequalities in the use of force against Black persons, as well as excessive arrest rates, calling for “a thorough review and meaningful response” from the NOPD.
“If we haven’t achieved the goal, why would we eliminate a structure that protects New Orleanian’s civil rights?” Rachel Taber, an advocate with the local immigrant rights organization Unión Migrante, stated.
When confronted with data indicating these racial disparities at a recent public meeting, Aronie stated that federal oversight focused on improving the police department’s policies and structures due to “the difficulties of solving bias in the same way it exists across almost every institution in the U.S.”
“I’d like to live in a city where those disparities in practice are reflected in statistics before the NOPD loses oversight,” Zunyana Crier, an activist with the group New Orleans for Community Supervision of Police, replied.
The NOPD’s superintendent stated in an interview that the police take racial discrepancies “extremely seriously” and are still investigating the causes.
“When we see inequalities, we ask ourselves whether there is a prejudice underlying them. “Not all disparities equal bias,” Kirkpatrick explained.
Struggling with community engagement.
According to federal monitors, an updated survey has not been released since 2019 due to COVID-19-related public health concerns, making it difficult to fully gauge how residents view their police department.
The city of New Orleans has also failed to fully implement plans for community advisory committees, which were designed to allow individuals from various neighborhoods to provide direct feedback to the NOPD. At a recent public hearing, NOPD Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon admitted that the program had mainly been left to “wither and die,” but that the city wanted to rectify it.
W.C. Johnson, a long-time neighborhood organizer opposed to dissolving the consent decree, said he and others had grown jaded over the years about the NOPD’s readiness to cooperate with locals. “When you’re not being taken seriously, when you’re not being included, why waste time?”
Police accountability groups have also highlighted concerns about the absence of Spanish and Vietnamese language accessibility throughout the months-long public comment period following the city’s motion to end federal monitoring.
They have stated in public forums that they believe some members of the federal monitoring team and the NOPD have considerable motivations to portray their decade-long work in New Orleans in a positive light.
During a sparsely attended public meeting on October 29, Ashley Burns, a member of the federal monitoring team, openly chastised her colleague, deputy monitor David Douglass, along the same lines. Douglass, a lawyer whose nonprofit Effective Law Enforcement for All was awarded a contract this year to manage the Minneapolis police department’s state-imposed reform plan, has hired several former NOPD officers in his outfit.
“I agree with the community, and I think it’s a great, great, great conflict of interest among a lot of other ethical and integrity issues,” Burns told Douglass during the meeting. “You don’t give a damn about Minneapolis or the people of New Orleans.”
Douglass has denied any conflict of interest and, in a brief interview, praised the NOPD’s progress, saying, “Many of the practices here are serving as a model for the nation and other departments.”
Source: Debate Over Federal Oversight: Is New Orleans Police Department Ready for Independence?
