Fifth Circuit of Appeals upholds NOPD consent decree
7th October 2013 · 0 Comments
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As the Mayor of New Orleans spent several days late last month in Washington, D.C. sharing his thoughts with the nation about the rising problem of gun violence in communities of color, a federal appeals court in New Orleans handed down a decision that throws a monkey wrench in the mayor’s ongoing efforts to derail a major overhaul of the city’s troubled police department.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a ruling denying New Orleans’ move to get out of a consent decree governing reforms at the city’s police department.
The appeals court ruling on September 27 affirmed the district court’s ruling against Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration, which had appealed in June.
In its ruling, the three-judge panel consisting of Chief Judge Carl Stewart and Judges Jacques Wiener and Eugene Davis wrote that it “agreed with the district court that the record reveals no change in circumstances after the city proposed the consent decree that justifies the city’s attempt to vacate it.”
“The record clearly demonstrates that the city was fully informed of the likely cost of complying with the OPP consent decree well before it signed the NOPD consent decree and urged the district court to approve it,” the three-judge panel wrote.. The panel also concluded that there was no significant change in the city’s ability to pay for both consent decrees between the time the Landrieu administration signed the NOPD consent decree and its attempts to have to tossed out.
Addressing CNO officials’ contention that the NOPD consent decree negotiation process was personal loans in tuscaloosa tainted by the involvement of former federal prosecutors Sal Perricone and Jan Mann, the three-judge panel wrote that “the city does not identify any way that it was prevented from ‘fully and fairly presenting its case,” and that “substantial independent evidence of problems related to the paid detail system was brought to the investigators by the public, NOPD officers, local judges and federal law enforcement officials during the investigation of the NOPD,” and not Perricone or Mann.
The police reforms could cost an estimated $55 million over the next five years. The NOPD consent decree covers a series of requirements for overhauling policies and procedures for use of force, training, interrogation, searches and arrests, recruitment and supervision.
“CUC always felt the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals would uphold the NOPD Consent Decree,” W.C. Johnson, a member of CUC and host of local cable-access show “OurStory,” last week. “As a manor of law, the Consent Decree was laid on solid foundation. As a matter of spirituality, New Orleans has run out of room to bury any more bodies or to cover up any more police terror. Most residents of New Orleans are not aware that police terror dates back to 1866 with the Mechanics Institute Massacre where hundreds of Blacks were killed, wounded and beaten by police and civilians just because Blacks wanted to participate in the electoral process. New Orleans is long overdue for the ‘chickens to come home to roost.’
“Personally, I found it unbelievable for the least likely people to try and usurp the ownership for the U.S. Department of a payday loan company charges 4 percent Justice coming to New Orleans for the purpose of righting the wrong that seemingly had a spell cast over the city for as long as anyone living or dead can remember The fact that the mayor tried to appear as though he was supportive of the DOJ’s investigation and conclusion, yet sabotaged the entire process at every turn caused the mayor to have apparently painted himself into the proverbial corner of stupidity, gives legitimacy to the theory of divine intervention. CUC has had the privilege of riding the coattails of whatever intervention was called into play.”
Johnson said CUC will continue to fight for justice for the families and friends of people murdered by the NOPD and will also actively monitor the implementation of the NOPD consent decree and the daily activities through its Cop Watch program and Civilian Oversight Committee.
City officials did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press for comment.
While the City of New Orleans is running out of cards to play in the ongoing battle over the NOPD consent decree, it may still request a rehearing from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Some residents and community leaders think that might be a grave mistake if the mayor chooses to go that route.
“He’s already been exposed as someone who talks out of both sides of his mouth,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “One meeting he promises to meet with Black leaders about racial profiling, then he holds his own meeting on the same day at the same time. Then he signs the NOPD consent decree and spends the next year trying to get it tossed out.
“This mayor is running the risk of being remembered as the elected official who talked about ‘one voice and one vision’ but fought tooth and nail to derail efforts to bring justice, equal protection and constitutional policing to New Orleans,” he added.
In other NOPD-related news, a federal judge on Tuesday, Oct. 1, ordered the release on bond of a retired New Orleans police sergeant awaiting a new trial on charges stemming from the Sept. 4, 2005 Danziger Bridge massacre.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engel-hardt said in Tuesday’s order that former NOPD Sgt.Arthur Kaufman is not charged with violent conduct in connection with gunfire at the Danziger Bridge, where police shot and killed two unarmed people and wounded four others.
Prosecutors induced late last month that they did not object to Kaufman’s latest bond request, noting Kauffman didn’t fire a gun in the incident.
Kaufman is one of five former officers whose convictions were thrown out last month when Engelhardt ruled the case had been tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Kaufman was serving a six-year sentence. Jurors had convicted him of participating in a cover-up.
Bond for Kaufman was set at $100,000.
After learning of Judge Engelhardt’s decision to grant the five Danziger officers a new trial, the families of James Brissette and Ronald Madison — the two people slain in the Sept. 4, 2005 incident — expressed disappointment and outrage.
Sherrell Johnson, the mother fast cash locations nj of 17-year-old James Brissette, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview,“ Is my son going to get a new lease on life?” she asked. “Is he coming back? What about the mental anguish that these people put us through? It is not fair to make us sit through that again.”
“We are extremely disappointed in Judge Engelhardt’s decision granting a new trial in the Danziger Criminal Civil Rights case,” Dr. Romell Madison, the brother of the 40-year-old, mentally disabled murder victim, said. “It has been over eight years since our brother Ronald was shot and killed on the Danziger Bridge and our brother Lance was falsely arrested and framed on eight counts of murder. This decision reopens this terrible wound not only for our family, but our entire community. From the beginning of this ordeal our family has sought justice, not just for ourselves but for all the victims and families. We urge the Department of Justice to appeal Judge Engelhardt’s decision. Our fight for justice continues.”
“Not very much has changed,” The Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly in a recent interview.
“The lesson with regard to the Danziger Bridge case is that Black people and people of good will can never let their guard down,” Brown added. “We must be always vigilant and ready to move whenever we need to. The struggle is nowhere near over.”
Additional reporting by Louisiana Weekly editor Edmund W. Lewis.
This article originally published in the October 7, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
