New Orleans insists its police department is ready to end federal oversight. Not all are convinced

NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Police Department, plagued for decades by corruption, is pushing to finally end more than a decade of federal oversight, amid lingering memories of a 1994 murder ordered by a crooked cop and an attempted cover-up in the 2005 killing of unarmed civilians.

Department critics are expected to voice opposition to lifting court-ordered federal oversight at a hearing Tuesday in federal court, likely raising concerns before a federal judge over racial disparities in police use of force, poor handling of sex crimes and lackluster community engagement.

To what extent federal oversight meaningfully changed the NOPD is particularly relevant as a cadre of high-ranking former NOPD officers and one of the lawyers overseeing the city consent decree are now responsible for managing a state-level reform plan for the Minneapolis police department in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

In 2011, the Department of Justice investigation found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity in the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). Two years later, the City of New Orleans entered into what it described as “the nation’s most expansive" federal oversight plan — a reform pact known as a consent decree — to fix the city's police force.

NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said in an interview that the department has fulfilled these goals: “We’ve built that system." If the federal judge agrees with the city and the Department of Justice motion to end the consent decree filed in Sept., the NOPD will remain under federal oversight for an additional two year sustainment period.

Almost everyone is willing to acknowledge the NOPD of today is in many ways a transformed department. But a range of prominent community activists and watchdogs say the NOPD is still not yet ready to relinquish federal oversight.

Stella Cziment, who heads the Office of the Independent Police Monitor, a civilian-run city agency, said that while the NOPD has made significant strides improving its internal policies and leadership, it has focused more on meeting federal benchmarks and not enough as a whole to work 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 said. “And ultimately, it is the community that is going to be served by the NOPD, needs to feel included by the NOPD, heard by the NOPD. And I cannot say today that that has been achieved.”

Ready to move on?

In recent years, the NOPD and the City of New Orleans has weathered payroll fraud allegations, a high-profile corruption charge involving the mayor’s bodyguard and a backlog of unsolved rape cases, among other problems raised by watchdogs.

Despite these ongoing issues, Rafael Goyeneche, president of a local anti-corruption nonprofit, the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said federal oversight of the NOPD and its upwards of 900 members should be seen as a “success story" — especially in light of the department's history.

“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 said. “But that is not going to necessarily mean that the entire department is corrupt or mismanaged.”

Federal monitors have said the consent decree should be seen as the floor, not the ceiling for policing in New Orleans.

Jonathan Aronie, the lead federal monitor, has praised the NOPD for improving its policies, training and auditing. The department now produces accurate data allowing auditors — and the public — to better track policing practices and bolster accountability, he has said.

“When we look at the collection of all these data, we no longer see a pattern of practice of unconstitutional conduct,” Aronie said at an Oct. 28 public meeting.

Racial disparities in use of force

For many residents in a city that is just over 50% Black, distrust of the NOPD runs deep and the department's data still reveals troubling disparities. Nearly 90% of all instances of police use of force targeted Black people last year, the city's Office of the Independent Police Monitor reported.

More than a decade ago, the Department of Justice's investigation highlighted similar rates of racial disparities in use of force against Black people as well as disproportionate arrest rates, calling for “a searching review and a meaningful response" from the NOPD.

“If we haven’t achieved the goal, why would we eliminate a structure that protects New Orleanians civil rights?” Rachel Taber, an organizer with local immigrant rights group Unión Migrante, said.

Confronted by community activists at a recent public meeting with data indicating these racial disparities, Aronie said federal oversight focused on improving the police department's policies and structures given "the difficulties of solving bias in the same way it exists across almost every institution in the U.S.”

“I would like to live in a city where those differences in practice reflect in the statistics before NOPD exits oversight,” Zunyana Crier, an activist with the group New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police, responded.

The NOPD's superintendent said in an interview that the department takes the data on racial disparities “extremely seriously” and continues to probe the reasons for them.

“When we see disparities, we then ask the question, is there a bias behind the disparity? Not all disparities equal bias,” Kirkpatrick said.

Struggling with community engagement

Federal oversight mandated biennial surveys of New Orleanians experiences with and perceptions of the NOPD, but an updated survey has not been released since 2019 due to COVID-19 related public health concerns according to federal monitors, leaving it difficult to fully gauge how residents view their police department.

The City of New Orleans has also lapsed in fully carrying out plans for community advisory boards, intended to give residents across different neighborhoods an opportunity to provide feedback directly to the NOPD. That program had largely been left to “wither and die” acknowledged NOPD Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon at a recent public meeting, though he said the city intended to fix it.

W.C. Johnson, a longtime community activist opposed to ending the consent decree, said he and others had grown cynical over the years with the NOPD's willingness to work with residents: “When you’re not being taken seriously, when you’re not being included, why waste time?”

Police accountability groups have also expressed concerns over the lack of Spanish and Vietnamese language accessibility in the monthslong period of public comment — given the two group's large presence in the city — after the city filed the motion to wind down federal oversight.

And they have said at public meetings that they perceive some on the federal monitoring team and the NOPD to have significant incentives to cast their decade-long work in New Orleans in a positive light.

During a sparsely attended public meeting on Oct. 29, one member of the federal monitoring team, Ashley Burns, openly criticized her colleague, deputy monitor David Douglass along the same lines. Douglass, a lawyer whose nonprofit Effective Law Enforcement for All won a contract this year to oversee the Minneapolis police department's state-imposed reform plan, has hired a range of former NOPD personnel in his organization.

“I agree with the community, I think it’s a great, great, great conflict of interest among a lot of other ethical and integrity issues," Burns told Douglass in 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 championed the NOPD's evolution: “Many of the practices here are serving as a model for the nation and for other departments."

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Associated Press reporter Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.