Does NOLa have too many law enforcement agencies?
3rd September 2020 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
Editor’s note: This story is part one of a two-part story.
As the national debate about the idea of defunding or even abolishing police departments continues to roil following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many people of color by law enforcement officers, localizing the controversy specifically to New Orleans might be especially complicated.
For one, the city retains a shroud over the New Orleans Police Department thanks to a series of scandals, incidents of abuse and murder, and a subsequent federal investigation and imposition in 2013 of a comprehensive consent decree aimed at reforming the NOPD.
The result of years of abuse of power, corruption and questionable public interactions is deep mistrust and even fear towards police on the part of many communities in the city, especially people of color and lower-income residents.
But also muddying the waters in any potential defunding of police departments in New Orleans is the existence of up to a dozen or so law enforcement agencies within the city – agencies created by state legislation that jockey for funding, hold territorial rivalries with each other, and can at times blur together in the eyes of the public.
Rolled into those factors is the question of whether there’s simply too many different police departments when it comes to fiscal and procedural efficiency. Could public money be saved if the number of police agencies is whittled down and consolidated, theoretically eliminating or at least reducing financial waste, operational overlap and redundancy, as well as creating a more cohesive, comprehensive system of law enforcement in the eyes of the public.
However, while on the surface such streamlining could be an idea worthy of discussion, law enforcement experts say that New Orleans is distinctive in several ways.
“We have a unique set of circumstances,” said Ronal Serpas, a Professor of Practice in the Loyola University-New Orleans Depart-ment of Criminology and Justice.
Factors like the city’s unique geography and topology (such as its location in lowlands and along a large lake), the prevalence of hurricanes, and New Orleans’ status as a major locus of commerce located on the country’s biggest river present a situation perhaps unmatched in the rest of the country.
Because of this, Serpas said, state officials acted as they did when establishing law enforcement in the city.
“The legislature determined that [multiple police agencies] made sense as a proper response to unique law-enforcement circumstances,” added Serpas, a former NOPD Superintendent and a 34-year veteran of law enforcement. “The nature of [policing] is much different here than in the rest of the country.”
Peter Scharf, an adjunct professor at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans and a respected researcher of corrections, criminal justice and policing, said that the law enforcement picture in the city, despite its complexity and occasional dysfunction, could theoretically serve as an example for agency cooperation, efficiency and a more positive public image. But it would take some work.
“The issue is, how do we leverage our assets across the region,” said Scharf, who also founded the Center for Society, Law and Justice at the University of New Orleans. “We need to do a much better job of sharing resources, training and technology.”
Counting all the police agencies in New Orleans can be dizzying. First, among the higher-profile police agencies along with the NOPD are the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Louisiana State Police, which locally is broken up into several different troops covering portions of the city and its suburbs.
But there are many other, smaller agencies, including the Orleans Parish Constable; the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) police; the harbor police operated by the Port of New Orleans; the Crescent City Connection bridge police, which falls under the State Police within the Louisiana Department of Public Safety; the levee police, run by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East; military police within the Louisiana National Guard headquartered at the Jackson Barracks; and investigators for the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office.
Several university police departments also operate in the city, including at Tulane, UNO, Xavier, Loyola and Delgado Community College.
There’s also the local offices of various federal agencies, such as the FBI, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. (The last two are physically headquartered in Metairie but cover the city of New Orleans).
Most of these entities are imbued, either by the federal government or the state government, with full policing powers, such as making arrests, executing warrants, fully enforcing all criminal and traffic laws, and carrying weapons following state-certified training with the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council. The POST Council itself was established by the state legislature and periodically amended, most recently in 2010, and it falls under the responsibility of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice within the office of the governor.
The state legislature has, at various times, even bestowed such authority on officers of weights and standards, livestock, agriculture and forestry.
For example, a state law first adopted in 1997 and revised several times later (most recently in 2010), created a “Weight and Standards Police Force” that is operated by the Department of Public Safety and Corrections.
According to the legislation, such officers “receive P.O.S.T. certification training, [and] are considered peace officers and shall have the authority to enforce the criminal and traffic laws of the state, apprehend criminals and make arrests, and perform other related duties imposed upon them by the legislature. As peace officers, they shall also have, in any part of the state, the same powers with respect to criminal matters and the enforcement of the law relating thereto as sheriffs, constables, and police officers have in their respective jurisdictions.”
Along with the substantial powers given by the state to all the various peace officers, the landscape of local law enforcement is impacted by the way each police agency – and the governmental entities that run them – is funded and subsequently operated, which might preclude any notion of comprehensive consolidation and streamlining.
Many of the police departments are autonomously run by independent, state government agencies with their own budgets, operations and funding sources, with one example being the levee police operated by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East. State legislation from 1985 authorizes such levee authorities to employ and operate peace officers.
SLFPAE Public Information Director Antwan Harris outlined the administrative structure of the authority and subsequently of its police.
“For clarity, we are a state agency obligated to the levees,” Harris said in an email to The Louisiana Weekly. “That’s our affiliation to New Orleans. We collect taxes in Orleans for this levee district as a means of levee maintenance but we aren’t affiliated with the city in that regard.”
A similar situation exists with the harbor police in the city, established largely to monitor and patrol the massive amount of waterborne commerce and trade that occurs due to New Orleans’ status as a key port near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Port of NOLA Communications Manager Jessica Ragusa noted that the port exists as an independent political subdivision that operates its law enforcement agency, the Harbor Police Department, according to state legislation. She said that as such, the HPD possesses “the authority to enforce laws and perform police functions…in support of the Port’s mission to drive regional economic prosperity by maximizing the flow of international trade and commerce as a modern gateway.”
Echoing comments by Serpas, Ragusa said the unique factors involved with the port’s administration (namely, river traffic and trade) necessitate the existence of an independent police agency whose officers, while not sharing administrative structures, budgets and chains of command with outside policies agencies, do have similar training, skills and powers. And, while independent, the HPD frequently works with other local policing agencies, like the NOPD.
“The maritime industry and international commerce components differentiate HPD from other law enforcement agencies, though the general skill sets are the same and HPD collaborates closely with other agencies,” she said.
To give a sense of size and scale, Ragusa said the HPD currently staffs 41 commissioned officers who all meet POST standards and “work to provide a safe, secure working environment for tenants, workers and visitors within the jurisdiction, which includes the riverfront in St. Bernard, Orleans and Jefferson parishes,” as well as the port’s inner harbor real estate assets.
Ragusa said the HPD’s uniformed patrol division operates around the clock carrying out comprehensive duties such as “crime prevention through visibility, response to all calls for service including emergency calls and hazmat incidents, monitoring vessel movements, traffic enforcement, cruise ship operations, community outreach programs, on-scene investigations of criminal incident and making arrests when necessary.”
In addition, Ragusa said, the force includes nine firefighters manning a fireboat in 24-hour shifts of three officers, as well as three civilian positions. The HPD also answers calls regarding the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad.
Much like the much larger NOPD, the HPD operates a communications and surveillance center, a criminal investigation division and bike patrols. But unlike the NOPD, it also maintains a marine division (namely, a police patrol boat), and the harbor agency has its own training center.
In addition to working with the NOPD and other local police agencies, HPD officers work with federal enforcement forces, like the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Customs and Border Patrol Task Force. Also relatively unique to its operations, the HPD also employs a civilian Facility Security Officer to ensure compliance with the Maritime Transportation Security Act.
The HPD naturally has a much smaller budget than other local law enforcement agencies. Ragusa said the annual HPD operating budget is about $4.16 million, while the NOPD’s 2019 budget is about $192 million, or about 46 times the size of the HPD’s spending plan.
Ragusa said the HPD functions extremely well and efficiently carries out its unique duties and challenges – especially maritime factors – which she said will continue to be reflected in its financial apparatus.
“Given the range of HPD’s general and maritime specific responsibilities as well as value to the region as part of overall public safety efforts,” she said, “we have no plans to reduce the budget at this time.”
Serpas said the HPD is an excellent example of why specialized police agencies are needed. Tasks like determining tonnage of a ship’s cargo or monitoring what type of materials come off and go on each boat really can’t be done by an NOPD officer in a cruiser. “The specific needs of a harbor are distinctly different than those of a neighborhood,” Serpas said.
While the Harbor Police Depart-ment could be a case study of an agency that is at the same time similar to the NOPD while also radically different, another operational microcosm can be found with the Housing Authority of New Orleans Police Department.
In 2011, state legislation upgraded HANO’s security division to a full police department, and by 2012 the HANO PD was up and running, including the creation of a Neighborhood Watch program at several HANO residential properties and partnerships with the NOPD.
The HANO police received significant upgrades to its technology and its vehicle fleet, and all its officers were now required to receive POST certification. According to HANO, the impact of its new police department was felt immediately around the authority’s properties.
HANO Director of Communica-tions and Intergovernmental Relations Lesley Thomas told The Louisiana Weekly that the housing authority cannot comment further on the subject of its police but said the department has been an overall success.
There’s also no doubt that HANO officers often put their lives on the line, much like peace officers in other agencies. In 2015, HANO PD officer James Bennett Jr. was shot and killed while on duty in his police cruiser.
HANO officers have also been forced to interact with protesters from the public, such as a 2007 incident in which two public-housing activists occupied a vacant building at the B.W. Cooper housing complex. The activists eventually left the premises peaceably and were arrested.
But do incidents like these legitimately necessitate their own autonomous law enforcement agencies? Do they justify an additional bureaucratic apparatus and funding structure separate from larger, higher-profile police departments like the NOPD or the Louisiana State Police? And do they improve or destroy the public’s trust in law enforcement?
This article originally published in the August 31, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
