City council revisits OIG sex crimes report
8th June 2015 · 0 Comments
Last week, the New Orleans City Council revisited a scathing report form 2014 that alleged that five NOPD detectives in the NOPD’s Special Victims Section failed to follow up on 86 percent of the calls reporting sexual assaut between 2011 and 2013.
WWL reported that while many of the OIG’s findings were validated, one of the most inflammatory revelations – 840 sex crimes cases listed as “signal 21” miscellaneous items with no follow-up – was explained as largely a record-keeping problem.
NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison explained that 677 of those cases were actually properly handled as sex offender registry checks, door-to-door house visits that don’t require any follow-up.
“PIB reviewed the daily activity sheets and documentation of the five detectives and determined that 677 of the 840 cases were actually sex offender registry checks,” Harrison said.
The new findings show that poor NOPD record-keeping and lack of oversight by commanders did not allow investigators any way to determine that most of the signal 21s were sex offender checks, a problem that Harrison said he quickly addressed.
“At the time of the OIG inquiry, there was no separate signal for a sex offender check,” Harrison said. “So in 2015, we changed the reporting procedure and assigned a specific signal code to sexual offender registry checks. They are now documented as a signal 542.”
The lack of documentation revealed glaring problems of policy, oversight and record-keeping, Public Integrity Bureau Commander Arlinda Westbrook said.
As a result, Westbrook said her internal probe for departmental violations has now expanded to include sex crimes commanders in addition to the five detectives that were the original subjects of the OIG report. She said PIB is still intensively reviewing 271 additional cases flagged by the OIG as lacking proper paperwork.
“We’ve reviewed 217 files so far, and over 50 percent of those cases that have been reviewed, we’ve discovered administrative policy violations ranging from neglect of duty to failure to maintain documentation,” she said. “We’re also looking at false and inaccurate reporting.”
Record-keeping by the sex-crimes unit was so spotty that OIG lead investigator Howard Schwartz noted at the time his original report was published that some of the cases lacking proper documentation could be sex offender checks. But without a clear paper trail, it took PIB and a special task force several months to reveal that 677 of the questionable cases were, in fact, routine sex offender checks paid for by a federal grant.
Donovan Livaccari, attorney for the Fraternal Order of Police, said inadequate record-keeping is a far cry from failing to investigate a sex crime complaint.
“I think it shows that IG’s report misrepresented some facts that made the report seem more inflammatory,” Livaccari told WWL.
Livaccari said the five detectives on the hot seat, some of whom are represented by FOP, were conscientious detectives trying to do the best they could with crushing caseloads and lack of support.
“I think that if we get a true, honest accounting of what happened and why things turned out the way they did, I think we’re going to find that there was a systemic problem that was a result of insufficient manpower.”
Eric Hessler, attorney for the Police Association for New Orleans, said – so far— the follow-up investigation sparked by the OIG report shows more problems with policy, supervision and lack of manpower than any intentional misconduct by sex crimes detectives.
“They were set up for failure,” Hessler said” A great part of this problem was caused by case overload and manpower,” he said. “The manpower shortage is still in existence and we have less people now assigned to sex crimes and child abuse than we did at the time the problem was created.”
Until the investigation is completed, the five detectives under review will remain on reassignment. Meanwhile, a special task force is re-investigating the 271 cases to see if any can be solved and brought to court.
“We made a commitment to identify the problem, find a solution, and put strong systems of accountability in place to make sure this never happens again,” Harrison said. “So over the past six months, we’ve worked aggressively and diligently to bring justice to the victims of these terrible crimes and to investigate the alleged misconduct of the five detectives and anyone else involved.”
In other NOPD-related news, Supt. Harrison called May 13 for a City ordinance and police policy change to reduce patrol officer resources wasted responding to false burglar alarms.
The OIG recommended these policy changes in a May 2014 report.
Supt. Harrison said NOPD responds to an average of 130 false alarm calls per day and that implementing his recommendations would free up an equivalent of six fulltime officers. The ordinance before the Council requires monitoring companies to follow an automatic alarm verification process before requesting police dispatch. A second false alarm in the same calendar year would result in a fine of $75 for automatic alarm users. A third instance carries a fine of $150 and no further response from NOPD for automatic alarms. Alarm monitoring companies are subject to fines of up to $250 per violation and potential suspensions of their licenses. Upon Council passage of the ordinance, NOPD will change response to unverified burglar alarms to Code 1 (non-emergency), scaled down from the current Code 2 (emergency response).
Assistant Inspector General for Inspection & Evaluation Nadiene Van Dyke noted the OIG’s NOPD staffing and deployment report was met with skepticism last May. “ I think what’s happening is that there’s been some time to consider more carefully the recommendations we made to see what’s really possible, and the result is that some of them are being implemented,” she said.
Meanwhile, the body count continues to rise in New Orleans as summer kicks into high gear. With more than three weeks remaining before the midpoint of 2015, the murder total was boosted last week by at least five murders.
On Tuesday, police were called out to the scene of a fatal shooting in New Orleans East that claimed the life of a 21-year-old man.
Police said the man was fatally shot near the intersection of Francis Drive and Ransom Street. He was suffering from a gunshot would to the chest. First responders pronounced him dead on the scene.
Police haven’t named a suspect or a motive, but they say they’d like to speak with 23-year-old Torrel Knox. Police say he may have information in connection with the case. You can find his picture below.
The victim won’t be identified until his family is notified
Police said a woman was found shot to death in her bedroom Wednesday night in the Desire neighborhood.
Police said the shooting happened around 10:30 p.m. in the 3600 block of Metropolitan Street. When officers arrived at the home on Metropolitan Street, they found the woman on the bedroom floor. She had been shot at least once and was pronounced dead on the scene.
Police are working to determine a suspect and a motive. No information was given about the victim.
Three more bodies were found around the city of New Orleans Thursday, according to police.
WWL reported that the first body was discovered on the side of I-10 near the Bullard Avenue exit just after 7 a.m. The body of an unidentified Black woman was investigated by police and the eastbound traffic on the span was shut down for about three hours.
Around 8:30 a.m. a body was found on the waterfront of the Mississippi River near the French Quarter.
Police confirmed that a body was found just before 8:30 a.m. It was discovered in the river near St. Peter Street.
Around noon, the body of a man was found near the base of the Lee Circle monument. Police haven’t released further details on any of the bodies that were found.
Anyone with information about any of these murders is asked to call CrimeStoppers at (504) 822-1111.
Police said last week that they are beefing up security in City Park after a shooting in the parking lot near Morning Call that left two people injured at 2 a.m. on Sunday, May 31.
The victims, a 21-year-old man and woman, are recovering from gunshot wounds after a late-night party in City Park turned violent, WWL reported.
“The location was shocking,” Leanne Sarco told WWL. “I didn’t expect something like that to happen here.”
No one who spends time in City Park or occasionally visited the 24-hour restaurant expected the evening to end so violently.
“It’s a little concerning that it would happen here, why it would happen here,” Andrea Wooten, told WWL.
Park officials say party guests headed to City Park after broke up a party in eastern New Orleans.
Employees at Morning Call told WWL that this was the second time in two weeks that a large, rowdy crowd has gathered in the park after hours.
“The whole parking lot was filled,” said Elizabeth Gazzo-Baker, a manager at Morning Call. “It was just more overwhelming, like I said, because there was just too many people here in the park.”
While City Park has its own police department, park officials say their officers only patrol during park hours.
At places like Morning Call, employees say that is concerning, especially when they work the overnight shift.
“It’s a big problem,” Gazzo-Baher told WWL. “From what I understand, they have had rapes in the park too.”
The NOPD said last week that the 3rd District does patrol the area, but with this recent shooting, the department says it is beefing up overnight patrols at City Park.
“When you are here by yourself at night, it’s just a welcome feeling to know that they are here to protect us,” said Morning Call employee Michael Guillory.
It is a peace of mind Morning Call regulars agree is very much needed.
“All the patrons, including the people that work here, deserve that security,” Wooten said.
The NOPD says the investigation into the shooting is still ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to call Crimestoppers at (504) 822-1111.
This article originally published in the June 8, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
