Voters to decide on more cops, NOFD pension
11th January 2016 · 0 Comments
On Thursday, the New Orleans City Council unanimously approved a property tax referendum to increase budgets for the NOPD and the city’s fire department.
The proposed tax hike would generate an additional $17 million annually for the NOPD budget, and boost the annual NOFD budget by an estimated $9 million.
The lion’s share of the additional funds in the NOPD budget would be used to boost the ranks of the undermanned police department which currently has about 1,163 officers.
The New Orleans Fire Department would use the generated funds to improve its pension.
WWL News reported that to promote the tax hike, slated for the April 9 ballot, the City of New Orleans unveiled a five-year plan to increase the force to 1,600 officers. But a review of 2015 personnel numbers obtained by WWL-TV shows a tough challenge ahead to meet those goals.
The NOPD has lost more than 400 officers to retirement and defections since New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010, mostly because the department, which is in the midst of a federally managed consent decree, has been losing officers faster than it can replace them.
WWL said that to meet the city’s projections, the NOPD would have to add about 90 officers a year above and beyond the number of officers who leave, according to the statistics.
Last year, the most ambitious year for NOPD hiring since Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010, the city’s net gain was only 30 officers. According to NOPD records, the city hired 136 cops, but lost 106. And of the new hires, 32 are recruits who started at the training academy on December 30th.
The Fraternal Order of Police told WWL that it supports the millage increase, but questions whether the city can boost hiring enough to meet its goals.
“The five-year plan seems pie-in-the-sky,” FOP spokesman Donovan Livaccari said. “I think it’s very ambitious. But it’s necessary. The department needs to get these people in the door…There’s a lot of competition for law enforcement officers right now.”
NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison acknowledged the tough task ahead, but said a variety of measures are under way to expand the hiring pipeline.
“It’s always a challenge,” Harrison said. “That’s why we have to increase the staffing. We have to increase the marketing. We have to have the sustained funding to do all the necessary things to bring people in.”
At the current rate of attrition – about 100 officers a year – the city would have to hire 190 officers to meet its goals. And to reach the benchmark of 1,600, the NOPD would have to hit its hiring goals each year until 2020.
Harrison acknowledged that the goal is ambitious and will require an “acceleration” in the rate of hiring.
“The question about accelerating the process is a very good one,” Harrison told WWL. “And the answer is yes. So we had to build the capacity to hire. So we’ve done that.”
Harrison added that one key proposal to increase hiring is to raise the number of recruits in each academy class. There is a now limit of 30 imposed by the federal consent decree.
The superintendent said the city will soon seek approval from the court to raise that cap.
The current troop strength, which sits at close to a 30-year low, has severely strained the department, especially in its response times to 911 calls.
In a series of stories in late 2015, “NOPD: Call Waiting,” WWL-TV revealed that NOPD response times to 911 calls have more than tripled since 2010, from 24 minutes to 79 minutes by mid-2015.
In response to questions from City Council members Thursday regarding the millage, Harrison said more boots on the ground is critical to reducing response times to manageable levels.
For the past two years, both the New Orleans Office of the Inspector General and the Metropolitan Crime Commission have said that the NOPD should hire civilians to perform office tasks in order to free up additional officers to patrol the city;s streets. A source told The Louisiana Weekly late last year that the NOPD had not followed through with those recommendations.
That raised a flag with some voters and community leaders as they weighed in on the proposed tax hike last week.
“The people of New Orleans are tired of paying more and more for city services they don’t get to enjoy,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly Friday.
“How do you wring your hands over a manpower crisis but refuse to better utilize all available officers to improve public safety?” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “And how does the City of New Orleans ask the people of New Orleans to come out of their pockets with more money to finance a poorly managed police department? It just doesn’t make sense.
This article originally published in the January 11, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
