OIG report touts efforts to rid N.O. of public graft, ineptitude

12th January 2015   ·   0 Comments

The New Orleans Office of Inspector General (OIG) last week released its 2014 Annual Report. Ten audit and evaluation reports identified $181,493 in costs that could have been avoided, and criminal investigations uncovered fraud schemes with a potential loss of $3,153,481.

Joint investigations with federal partners led to 10 indictments and three convictions, while cases with state charges produced four bills of information. Administrative investigations resulted in termination or suspension of 13 city employees, including Malachi Hull, the former head of the New Orleans Taxicab Bureau, and the former Airport Ground Transportation Manager.

An IG report alleged that Malachi Hull failed to properly collect revenues and to properly maintain bureau-related files. Before the report’s release, Hull was fired, and two cab bureau investigators were fired for mistreatment of drivers and tour guides – behavior that the IG’s office audit claimed that Hull was aware of.

A year before he was terminated, Hull was at the center of a hotly contested battle to overhaul the city’s taxi-permit system.

One of the hallmarks of the OIG’s work in 2014 was the unearthing of examples of the New Orleans Police Department ongoing woes as it struggles to become compliant with federal standards for constitutional policing.

A “Performance Audit of NOPD UCR Reporting of Forcible Rapes and a “Performance Audit of NOPD UCR Reporting of Robbery” determined that more than 40 percent of rapes and 37 percent of robberies were misclassified as miscellaneous, unfounded, or as a lesser charge. An Evaluation of NOPD Staffing and Deployment” revealed that only 21 percent of NOPD officers were assigned to answer calls for service and that the shortfall for answering calls for service was about 100 officers. The report noted approximately 100 officers were performing job duties not requiring a sworn officer, and recommended conversion of these positions to non-sworn employees. Although NOPD rejected all 11 recommendations in its response to the report, its new leadership has reassigned 22 officers to patrol duty, converted sworn positions to non-sworn, and assigned narcotics detectives to patrol duties. The City Council is working on legislation to reduce the burden of responding to 39,000 false burglar alarms each year.

IG Ed Quatrevaux disputed widely held beliefs that the NOPD had a manpower shortage, arguing that the department’s top brass was failing to strategically utilize its available personnel. He recommended that NOPD hire civilians to perform office duties in order to free up additional officers to patrol the streets of New Orleans.

An “Inquiry into Documentation of Sex Crimes Investigations” found that five NOPD detectives in the NOPD Special Victims Section submitted supplemental reports documenting investigative activities in only 14 percent of cases. The OIG identified 271 cases for review and NOPD investigation.

Just days after the report was released, the NOPD announced the formation of a task force to probe the allegations made in the IG report and to root out policies and practices that fail to assist sexual assault victims. Unfortunately, just months after forming the task force some of those tapped to launch a probe of the Special Victims Section were reassigned to address the spike in armed robberies and violent crime in the French Quarter.

The IG said last week that he remains optimistic about the efforts being made to prevent sexual assault victims from falling through the cracks again.

“The new chief has already started implementing some of those recommendations. So we’re going to continue with the NOPD,” New Orleans Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux told WDSU News. “We want to make them the greatest police force in America. To do that we have to find the problems, and we have to accept those problems and work on fixing them.”

An “Evaluation of the City’s Electronic Monitoring Program Administered by the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, Part I: Budget and Billing” found that the OPSO overcharged the City for the program. “Part II: Implementation and Supervision” found inadequate supervision that allowed defendants to ignore the terms of their court-ordered restrictions without immediate consequences.

From 2009 through 2014, the OIG issued 61 reports, 15 follow-up reports and 30 public letters. Savings from reports and investigations are estimated at $57.9 million.

While the OIG is proud of its cost-cutting impact, Quatrevaux admits that that is not his office’s primary gal.

“The purpose is to try to track what we’re doing of the city, but monetary savings is actually a byproduct. We’re here to audit and investigate and evaluate. That’s our job,” he told WDSU News. “If it produces savings, great. If it doesn’t, that’s fine. We’re still going to do investigations.”

The 2014 OIG annual report can be found online at www.no­laoig.org.

This article originally published in the January 12, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.