Emails suggest possible attempts to micromanage NOPD by Mayor’s office
20th April 2015 · 0 Comments
A series of emails dating back several months are giving residents a bird’s eye view of the Landrieu administration’s relationship with the New Orleans Police Department.
The emails, related to NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison’s efforts to convince the city’s Civil Service Commission to authorize the hiring of a well-paid deputy chief of staff, were obtained byNola.com/The Times Picayune through a public-records request. The emails reveal that the deputy chief of staff was the brainchild of the Landrieu administration, which created the job and initially intended for it to be filled by an existing political appointee.
In an article dated April 15, Nola.com reported that Landrieu administration officials conceived the job title, listed its responsibilities and reportedly coached NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison on how to persuade the Civil Service Commission to approve the designation of a new unclassified position despite rules put in place “to limit the proliferation of political appointees.”
NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble, a former Landrieu administration spokesman, told Nola.com that the successful creation of the NOPD deputy chief of staff post was a collaborative effort between the Landrieu administration and the NOPD’s top brass.
“From the first day on the job, Superintendent Harrison has been in discussions with Mayor Landrieu about the need for additional senior-level management support at the department to oversee its transformation,” Gamble told Nola.com.
“As our goal is to put as many officers as possible on the streets, we decided the deputy chief of staff should be a civilian position,” Gamble added.
Michael Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, told Nola.com that the discovery of the emails only confirms suspicions that the Landrieu administration is seeking to gain greater control of the NOPD.
Glasser said the Landrieu administration’s involvement in the creation of the position amounts to “a hand up the back of the department…a continuation of the puppet show.”
Nola.com reported that it found no evidence in the emails to confirm that Supt. Harrison had any direct involvement in the creation of the NOPD deputy chief of staff position.
It also reported that Landrieu staffers Jon Wisbey and Alexandra Norton talked in the emails about how to create the position to get it green lighted by the CSC, how to define its job duties and how to tweak the job title to avoid having to answer certain questions that might be posed by CSC members.
In an email about the creation of the position, Chief Administration Officer Andy Kopplin reportedly told the staffers, “Please advise them to keep this close-hold confidential, as we want the position approved before announcing who might be selected for it.”
According to the article, Harrison was meticulously coached about how to present the subject matter to the Civil Service Commission.
In preparation for the hearing before the (Civil Service) Commission on Monday, I’ve put together a couple of slides that you can distribute as a handout to the Commissioners, as well as some talking points and ‘tough questions’ for you,”Wisbey wrote in an email to Harrison,
When asked by Nola.com to identify the City Hall employee it had planned to tap to fill the newly created position, a Landrieu spokesman refused to do so, saying that “preliminary internal hiring discussions are considered confidential.”
Kopplin told the New Orleans City Council in March that the Landrieu administration was backing away from hiring a “highly qualified” City Hall employee, explaining that the administration felt “a broader search for candidates was in the best interest of the NOPD and the City and best reflects how the Landrieu Administration has approached filling most vacancies since the Mayor took office.”
According to NOPD officials, about 55 people have applied for the position by the April 1 deadline. The resumes of those candidates are being evaluated, they said.
“This is why no one trusts the Landrieu administration,” Gentilly resident Kwesi Holmes told The Louisiana Weekly. “You can’t accept anything at face value. It’s the same way with the Jindal administration — both the mayor and the governor want people to believe everything they say while refusing to run transparent, accountable adminstrations.”
The mayor’s handling of the NOPD and crime-related issues have been widely criticized by Black grassroots and civil rights leaders including former New Orleans NAACP branch president Danatus King who resigned from a NOPD superintendent search committee in 2010 after deciding that the newly elected mayor was not interested in receiving input on NOPD superintendent candidates from members of the search committee. King and several others resigned, alleging that the mayor had already decided to hire childhood friend Ronal Serpas to run the NOPD before the search committee was even formed.
After initially praising the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to impose a 492-point NOPD consent decree aimed at overhauling the city’s police department, the Landrieu administration sought to convince the federal courts to toss out the consent decree, arguing that the consent-decree process had been compromised by an online posting scandal involving several federal prosecutors, that the City of New Orleans found not afford to pay for both NOPD and OPP consent decrees and that the NOPD did not need a consent decree because it had already begun the process of reforming itself.
The mayor raised the ire of Black residents when he referred to several NOPD officers wounded in an exchange with two men that claimed the life of 20-year-old Justin Sipp as “heroes,” bringing to mind the signs praising members of the NOPD’s “Danziger 7” as they turned themselves in after killing two unarmed Black men and wounding four others just days after Hurricane Katrina.
After two Black teenagers — Sidney Newman and Ferdinand Hunt — were assaulted by plainclothes NOPD officers and state troopers in the French Quarter after a 2013 Carnival parade, the mayor agreed to meet with Black community leaders to discuss racial profiling but later reneged on that promise and held his own meeting at an uptown church to discuss his NOLA For Life initiative on the same day and at the same time as the meeting in Tremé on racial profiling.
During last year’s mayoral campaign, Landrieu praised NOPD Supt. Ronal Serpas and said he planned to keep him in that post for his second term. Six months later, Serpas resigned after a NOPD officer shot a suspect in the head after turning off an NOPD body camera and the NOPD failed to report the incident to the public for two days.
After naming Michael Harrison interim NOPD superintendent, Landrieu promised to conduct an open, nationwide search for a permanent replacement but later reneged on that promise by announcing that Harrison would become the city’s next police superintendent.
Police union leaders have openly criticized the Landrieu administration for the loss of 500 NOPD officers since the mayor was elected in 2010, poor working conditions, mismanagement of the NOPD’s paid-detail system and the use of other law enforcement agencies to perform tasks that could have been performed by NOPD officers.
In an open letter to the mayor earlier this year, Police Association of New Orleans president Michael Glasser accused Landrieu of turning his back on NOPD officers.
A number of talk-show hosts at WBOK have openly criticized the mayor’s tendency to rule his administration with an iron fist and WBOK morning-show host and former City Councilman Oliver Thomas on several occasions has referred to the mayor as a “sore winner.”
“From his scripting of NORD Commission to his less-than-subtle efforts to stack the deck on all of the city’s boards and commission, it’s clear that Mitch Landrieu has control and boundary issues,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly.
This article originally published in the April 20, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
