Homeless sweep ahead of Taylor Swift concert reveals conflict between city, Troop NOLA
28th October 2024 · 0 Comments
By Katie Jane Fernelius
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — City leaders were left scrambling Wednesday after Louisiana state troopers led an operation to clear a Calliope Street homeless encampment despite strong objections from City Hall.
The move came two days after the Louisiana State Police first announced their intent to clear the encampment in advance of multiple nights of Taylor Swift concerts at the Superdome nearby. Officials in Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration said they were taken by surprise by the announcement and urged the State Police to reconsider.
But their pleas appeared to fall on deaf ears. State troopers – alongside officers with the state Departments of Transportation and Development, Health, Wildlife and Fisheries, the State Fire Marshal and the Division of Probation and Parole – plowed ahead and began clearing the encampments on Wednesday morning. They transferred the residents to what they describe as a “new, safer” location a half-mile away across the street from the Home Depot on Earhart Boulevard.
Their action is in direct conflict with the city’s current efforts to steadily place unhoused community members into long-term stable housing before “decommissioning” encampments, city officials said.
“We want to continue that process with the rest of the locations throughout New Orleans,” Nathaniel Fields, head of the Office of Homeless Services and Strategies, said. “We cannot do that if we’re sweeping encampments and moving individuals from those locations.”
The move by Troop NOLA, a contingent of state troopers patrolling the city since earlier this year, underscored concerns from criminal justice reform advocates about the presence of the State Police in New Orleans and raised questions over who is ultimately in charge when city and state directives conflict.
Troop NOLA formed under the directive of Gov. Jeff Landry, who campaigned for his position in part by pledging to use the power of the state to target crime in New Orleans. Cantrell, for her part, was enthusiastic about the new troop operating in the city.
“I’m in full support,” Cantrell said early this year following the announcement of the initiative, according to a report in The Times-Picayune.
Cantrell is not the first mayor to welcome the support of the State Police in the city. In 2014 and 2015, her predecessor, former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, worked out a deal with the state for troopers to patrol the French Quarter and surrounding areas following a deadly 2014 mass shooting on Bourbon Street. For most of its existence, that deployment fell under a formal written agreement that gave the city some control over where and how state troopers operated.
But as it stands, there is no evidence that any such formal agreement exists between the Cantrell administration and the Louisiana State Police regarding Troop NOLA’s work in the city, Verite News has learned.
“Troop NOLA polices here but operates based on priorities set by Baton Rouge instead of New Orleans,” New Orleans Independent Police Monitor Stella Cziment said. “This means there can be a state trooper strategy that can clash with local police and our community, and this is what we are seeing today.”
In an email, Louisiana State Police spokesperson Sgt. Kate Segall said Troop NOLA works closely with both the NOPD and other partners in the metropolitan area.
“LSP is a statewide Law Enforcement agency with jurisdiction throughout the state,” Segall wrote.
Segall gave a simple explanation for why the encampment clean-up fell under their purview: the Calliope encampment, located near the Greyhound bus terminal, is under a portion of the Pontchartrain Expressway, a state-controlled highway, giving the State Police jurisdiction there.
“It’s important to note that residing on state property is illegal,” Segall told Verite News.
But this week’s operation has revived concerns about why Cantrell appears to have ceded so much authority to the State Police – an agency that is under a Department of Justice civil rights investigation and that is not required to abide by the terms of the New Orleans Police Department’s federal consent decree, according to the judge presiding over the long-running reform agreement.
“These sweeps demonstrate our concern with utilizing law enforcement that does not answer to local elected leaders, is not responsive or answerable to community concerns, and does not need to comply with the Consent Decree,” Cziment said.
‘They’re going to help us in all areas of the city’
In February, after Landry announced his plan to put a permanent State Police troop in the city, Cantrell welcomed the idea with open arms. NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick likewise supported Troop NOLA, saying the additional bevy of officers would help the department – which was facing a shortage in its ranks – with emergency response.
“They’re going to help us in all areas of the city,” Kirkpatrick told reporters at the time.
Neither Cantrell’s office nor Landry’s office responded to inquiries from Verite News. But the city’s contracting database shows no agreements between the city and the state governing the Troop NOLA deployment. And no such agreement has come up for review in any regular City Council meetings this year.
Will Snowden, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, made a public records request earlier this year and was also unable to locate any formal agreements between the city and the State Police regarding Troop NOLA. Other agreements between the city and Louisiana State Police exist, but they mostly concern smaller arrangements around interstate patrols, he said.
“What is concerning is when we have a policing entity like Troop NOLA that does not have the more direct kind of democratic accountability mechanisms that we have with local government actors,” Snowden said. “There’s a concern there that the behavior and the tactics of Troop NOLA are not consistent with the expectations of New Orleans residents.”
The lack of an agreement today stands in contrast to the last time the State Police worked a permanent patrol in New Orleans.
Back then, Mayor Mitch Landrieu invited the force to help police the French Quarter following a high-profile shooting on Bourbon Street in June 2014, which left nine people injured and one dead.
The State Police soon sent in about 50 troopers to work the NOPD’s 8th District, which includes the French Quarter. It began as a temporary patrol. The following year, it became a long-term one – as Troop NOLA is now intended to be – and the Landrieu administration inked a cooperative endeavor agreement with the state.
The agreement defined the terms of their agreement, including operational details. Under that CEA, the state police would be required to plan its patrols “in conjunction with the New Orleans Police Department.”
The patrol plans would be “based on the needs of the Eighth District as determined by the Eighth District Commander.” And State Police officials would be required to coordinate shift assignments and patrol areas with the 8th District.
“The 2015 CEA is an example of how the New Orleans City and Louisiana State governments can agree how they will work together,” Snowden said. “This provides clarity not only for their own understanding, but also for the public as well. The absence of an agreement today sends the message that the State government is not trying to work with New Orleans but take away the city’s autonomy.”
In spite of the agreement, the presence of State Police in the city at the time was not without problems. Troopers detailed to the 8th District were repeatedly accused of aggressive tactics, including several allegations of excessive force and engaging in dangerous high-speed chases against nonviolent suspects, which NOPD officers are prohibited from doing under the consent decree.
The Landrieu administration would later clash with state law enforcement when then-Attorney General Landry in 2017 unilaterally deployed a violent crime task force made of officers from his office’s investigative arm to the city. Then-NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison wrote in a letter to Landry at the time that the task force was operating illegally in the city, saying that under the city’s Home Rule Charter, his department was the chief law enforcement agency in New Orleans.
Harrison and Landrieu also criticized the task force for operating under different, more lax standards than the NOPD, which had then been under the consent decree for four years. In his letter, Harrison wrote that “any policing conducted within New Orleans must strictly comply with the mandates of the consent decree.” And Landrieu said he was “happy to have anybody’s help, so long as they police appropriately and under the guidelines,” according to a report by The New Orleans Advocate.
Landry later disbanded the task force, citing local opposition, The Advocate reported.
‘I don’t know what I am going to do’
When Troop NOLA was announced this year, it quickly drew criticism and concerns from local criminal justice reform advocates, as well as U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, the judge presiding over the consent decree.
Though Morgan said the consent decree did not extend to Troop NOLA, in March she said she was worried about the agency’s lack of transparent planning and coordination with the city.
This summer, Troop NOLA again came under scrutiny after a series of trooper-initiated car chases ended in crashes in the city.
But amid a continued drop in violent crime, one that began before the state deployment, local leaders in city government have largely not pushed back against Troop NOLA – until this week.
According to Councilmember Lesli Harris, rumors first began to swirl last Friday that Troop NOLA had plans to sweep the encampment.
Harris said she reached out and talked to Lieutenant Rodney Hyatt, who leads Troop NOLA, trying to convince him to hold off on the action since the city was already working to clean the encampment before its self-imposed deadline of Thanksgiving.
According to city officials and those who resided there, the Calliope encampment was notable for its relative cleanness and calmness. In recent months, it had become a place where drug paraphernalia or predatory behavior were rare. Those who resided there would regularly sweep the sidewalks and manage trash disposal. It was a place where people stayed for long periods of time and knew each other’s names.
As part of a plan to remove encampments and find housing for hundreds of homeless people in the city, city officials were already working with local organizations like UNITY of Greater New Orleans and Travelers Aid to assign caseworkers to the encampment residents and help them secure appropriate identification and paperwork to access social services. According to those familiar with the work, the city had managed to secure housing vouchers for almost half of the estimated nearly 70 people living in the Calliope encampment.
Because of all this, Fields said he was surprised when he learned of Troop NOLA’s plans to sweep the encampment.
“I thought we had a plan in the process that was kind of already worked out,” Fields told Verite News.
Word soon reached the Calliope encampment.
Before the sweep, residents told Verite News that they were scared and unsure of what would happen. Some were afraid that they could be arrested and put in jail. Others expressed frustration that they had vouchers in hand but were just waiting for housing to become available. A woman named Toni couldn’t talk about the impending state action without crying.
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” she told Verite News.
On Tuesday (Oct. 22), Fields, along with nearly a dozen community advocates, held a press conference and urged Landry and Troop NOLA to halt their efforts, saying it would prove to be disastrous to the city’s long-term efforts to combat homelessness.
“Do not sweep this encampment or other encampments,” Fields said. “It is not helping the process. It is causing more trauma than good.”
Martha Kegel, the executive director of UNITY, which has been working with residents at the encampment, placed the blame squarely on Landry.
“I would just say that the only realistic strategy is to persuade the governor that this doesn’t make sense,” Kegel said. “There is no other strategy at this point that would work.”
Together, Fields and Kegel argued that the encampment sweep would jeopardize their efforts toward putting people into long-term stable housing. It would risk traumatizing some of the city’s most vulnerable residents and eroding established trust with local caseworkers. It also would scatter residents across the city, potentially causing new problems. And it would prevent the city from being able to locate and work with residents it was actively in the process of housing.
“It’s very important that the state not be working at cross purposes with itself,” Kegel said at the press conference. “Housing, we know, is the proven solution to homelessness.”
But the next morning, Harris received word that state officers were mobilizing at the encampment. She rushed to Calliope where she saw officers from various state departments were breaking down the encampment: dismantling tents, throwing out some residents’ belongings, while helping others pack. Officers with the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries drove up in large trucks. Some wore bulletproof vests.
Segall, the State Police spokesperson, said that the officers were there to “personally speak to the unhoused individuals and assist them in packing their belongings as well as transporting them and their belongings to a new location.”
That new location was across from the Home Depot on Earhart Boulevard. Unhoused community members complained that the new location was covered in dirt and broken glass.
But Segall described the new location as “safer.”
“Troopers are committed to ensuring the safety of both the unhoused and the broader community while maintaining public infrastructure,” Segall told Verite News.
Those present at the encampment cleaning contested this view.
“They threw my tent into a whole pile of trash,” encampment resident Thaddeus Green told Verite News. He said he was able to retrieve the tent, but it was damaged during the sweep.
Another resident, Chynna White, expressed concern over how the encampment sweep would impact her ability to eventually get into stable housing.
“This is going to confuse my case manager because now they have to look for me,” she told Verite News. “This might push our paperwork back. I already did my application and everything. I’m just waiting for a key.”
For Harris, the move is both frustrating and heartbreaking.
“This has been an ongoing effort since I’ve started, and to see it disrupted within five days is just really mortifying,” Harris said. “We don’t need police sweeps. We don’t need anything like that. We need more resources, and we’ve never gotten those resources.”
Harris told Verite News that she had hoped to use emergency funds to try to get people into hotels, but the fact of the Taylor Swift concert means that vacancies are hard to come by.
Following the sweep, New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno released a statement calling for the formation of a working group for the city and the state, as well as the creation of a cabinet position focused on homelessness in the governor’s office.
“With State coordination and true collaboration to end homelessness, everyone could be on the same page and achieve the same goal of providing improved quality of life, permanent housing, and wrap-around services,” Moreno said in her statement. “I hope that the Governor gives strong consideration to my recommendations and we can work to move forward together.”
However, concerns remain as to whether Troop NOLA’s unilateral decision to sweep the encampment – in opposition to the city’s own stated position – might ultimately presage further encroachment in the future.
“The ability of New Orleanians to elect and influence what their government should look like is being subverted by the governor of Louisiana,” Snowden said. “From my perspective, I think the state’s involvement in local governance has been an encroachment on maintaining New Orleanians’ ability to decide what their government should look like.”
Safura Syed contributed reporting to this story.
This article originally published in the October 28, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
