Judge says the New Orleans Police Department can begin the process of ending federal oversight
Judge says the New Orleans Police Department can begin the process of ending federal oversight
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans Police Department can begin ending its longstanding federal oversight, a judge ruled Tuesday in response to a request from the city and the Justice Department to wind down the monitoring program.
The police department has transformed itself into a more transparent and accountable agency, even though work remains to be done over the next two years while the program concludes, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan said during a hearing.
“The court is tremendously proud of the achievements the NOPD has made,” Morgan said. “The hard work of the civilian and sworn members of the NOPD paid off. The NOPD is a far different agency from the one that spawned the DOJ investigation in 2011.”
An 11th hour legal maneuver
The city filed a late motion Friday asking to end federal oversight immediately, but Morgan rejected it, describing it as unnecessary “political gamesmanship” which “diminishes the credibility of the top leadership of the city.”
The city also asked to bring on counsel from the office of the state’s Republican attorney general, Liz Murrill, who has criticized federal oversight as a waste of money. Morgan denied the request.
City Council President J.P. Morrell, standing beside city mayoral candidate and councilmember Helena Moreno, blasted Cantrell’s attempt to end oversight immediately, calling it “dastardly” and “offensive.” They said they were not consulted beforehand and pressed for the city to fully finish the reform process.
“The city cannot have it both ways,” said Morgan, noting the city had already acknowledged that it had not yet fulfilled all the requirements needed to end federal oversight.
Instead, the judge said she was sticking to the joint motion by the city and Justice Department that requested she grant a two-year “sustainment period” to allow time for the NOPD to fix outstanding problems and demonstrate that existing reforms remained in place.
In a Monday press release, Mayor LaToya Cantrell praised the police department for its progress but criticized Morgan for not ending the oversight sooner, claiming the reform goals “were achieved years ago.”
A transformed police department
In 2013, the city agreed to what it called “the nation’s most expansive” federal oversight plan after a U.S. Justice Department investigation found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity. The department had long engaged in mistreatment of the city’s Black community and been plagued by high-profile scandals, including a 1994 murder ordered by a corrupt officer and an attempt to cover-up police killings of unarmed civilians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Although critics say the police department hasn’t done enough to change and restore the public’s trust, Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told Morgan during a Monday court hearing that the NOPD has established a “new culture.”
In the years since oversight started, the department has created a framework of audits and data analysis, increased transparency by revising and publishing online training materials and policies, bolstered disciplinary processes, and enhanced efforts to cut down on longtime issues such as payroll fraud, police officials said.
Kirkpatrick told reporters that the judge’s ruling was the culmination of 12 years of hard work by her department.
“It’s a huge milestone for the city, I’m excited about it,” she said. “NOPD — this police department — is truly a world class police department in a world class city and I’m just so proud.”
“What’s important during this two-year period, we stay the course,” Kirkpatrick added. “There will be no pulling back, it’s just going forward.”
Jonas Geissler, a Justice Department attorney, told Morgan on Monday that more improvements are needed before the city can fully exit federal oversight. The Justice Department will continue to review audits, policies and data throughout the sustainment period, he said.
Community concerns remain
During a public comment period, community watchdogs raised a host of concerns — many tied directly to original mandates from the 2013 reform pact the city had promised the Justice Department it would implement. Police officials told the judge they are now trying to address some of the most pressing.
“One underlying message was clear: The work is not done and we need the community to recognize that and to continue engaging,” Stella Cziment, who heads the city’s Office of the Independent Police Monitor, told The Associated Press. “Because it can’t be done without them.”
An initiative to establish community advisory boards to meet with and provide recommendations to the police has by almost all accounts languished, though the city appointed a full-time staffer in December to try and revive these groups in the coming months.
Detectives still struggle to handle high sex crime caseloads, leading to far fewer getting solved than the national average. In the past three weeks, NOPD officials say they assigned eight more detectives to work on these cases, bringing the total number of officers from 17 to 25. Julie Ford, an advocate for improving police response to sex crimes, said the NOPD “continues to struggle with the effectiveness of their investigations into sexual assault cases” and will benefit from ongoing federal monitoring and support.
And in a city that’s just over 50% Black, nearly 90% of police uses of force targeted Black people last year, the city’s Office of the Independent Police Monitor reported. A court-appointed federal monitors reviewed the NOPD’s use of force and concluded there was no evidence of bias based on Justice Department analysis. The NOPD also plans to hire Sigma Squared, a consulting firm co-founded by Harvard University economist Roland Fryer, to improve its analysis of potential bias in its policing.
Fryer said in an email to the AP that his company “has created the only software in the world that can distinguish between disparity and bias and help departments generally do more data-responsive policing.”
Police officials have said that contracting Fryer is an example of the department going above and beyond the requirements of federal oversight.
Belden “Noonie Man” Batiste, who chairs the civic advocacy group New Orleans United Front and attended most of the public hearings, protested in front of the court as recently as Monday to oppose ending federal oversight.
Batiste said he appreciated that the judge directly addressed the broad array of concerns he and others had shared with her. And he noted that with the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has sought to curtail federal oversight of police departments, he believed it was a smart move to lock the city’s police into another two years of monitoring and reforms during the sustainment period.
“Sometimes you can have a debate, and you can walk away either with nothing or a little something,” Batiste said. “Going to sustainment, that’s something.”
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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on X: @jack_brook96
By JACK BROOK
Associated Press/Report for America
