New report links fewer arrests to NOPD manpower shortage
20th January 2015 · 0 Comments
A report from the Metropolitan Crime Commission released last personal loan based on salary week has found a link between the NOPD’s dwindling ranks and a decrease in the number of arrests.
The report comes less than two weeks after New York City’s crime commissioner acknowledged that the NYPD’s ongoing feud with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is responsible for a drastic drop in the number of arrests by the nation’s largest police department.
In a reference to ongoing tensions between De Blasio and NYPD officers, Police Association of New Orleans president Michael Glasser accused New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu of turning his back on the NOPD. Glasser said that despite being betrayed by the Landrieu administration, the men and women of the NOPD remain committed to doing whatever they can to keep residents and visitors safe.
The MCC report suggests that improving public safety might be increasingly difficult as the undermanned NOPD struggles to attract new officers faster than it is losing them.
“A steep reduction in police manpower has depleted the NOPD to a 37–year staffing low with fewer than 1,000 officers actively working,” the report said. “The smaller police force generated fewer total arrests and issued fewer municipal summonses.”
The report says that during the first six months of 2014, the NOPD witnessed a 30 percent increase in violent crime and a 14 percent rise in property crime.
Despite these dramatic spikes in violent and property crime, total arrests declined by 15 percent from 16,414 in the second half of 2012 to 13,921 in the first half of 2014, the Metropolitan Crime Commission reported.
The report also found that “as total arrests decreased, police maintained focus on arrests for more serious felony crimes, particularly crimes of violence,” and there were increases in the rates of felony arrests accepted for prosecution and felony convictions.
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WWL-TV listed some of the report’s negative findings:
• It is taking eight days longer to reach prosecutorial decisions for suspects arrested for felonies
• Police officers were arresting too many people for minor out of parish warrants, and
• Nearly 10 percent of people arrested for felonies were over-charged by the NOPD.
Rafael Goyeneche, a former cop who now serves as executive director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said he doesn’t expect the NOPD to reach its hiring goals while Mayor Mitch Landrieu is still in office at City Hall.
“The mayor has said that his goal is to have a 1,600-member police force,” said Goyeneche told WWL last week. “Right now there’s about 1,100.”
Goyeneche said it could take 10 years to hire the 500 additional officers the Landrieu administration has repeatedly said the NOPD needs to effectively police New Orleans, because even if the City of New Orleans is able to hire 150 new officers a year, 100 others are leaving the department on average.
“That means they’re only add 50 officers to the equation,” Goyeneche told WWL.
“Our goal is to hire 1,600, so we’re pushing to get there, whether it is by the end of the administration, or it takes us a little longer,” NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison said.
Goyeneche said the NOPD’s top brass is looking for ways to put extra officers on the street, including hiring civilians to perform various office duties that would allow officers currently performing those tasks to be used to patrol the city’s streets.
“Another immediate infusion of manpower might be to redirect the fact that sergeants are supposed to be front-line supervisors, now have primary responsibility of conducting guarenteed bad credit loans patrols and responding to calls for service,” Goyeneche said.
“Our sergeants have that function to some degree right now,” Harrison told WWL.
While the MCC report painted a grim picture of the NOPD, Goyeneche did note last week that felony arrests are actually up two percent in New Orleans.
“The good news, or the even better news, is the police are focusing on the felony crimes, and those felony arrests are now being converted into felony convictions,” Goyeneche said.
“We can keep the city safe,” Harrison said.
Even if that means it’s Carnival time for everybody but the men and women in blue. As was reported last week, the NOPD has suspended time-off requests for officers seeking to ride in local Mardi Gras parades, citing the department’s smaller force and its effort to convince state police to lend additional assistance to the city.
With 29 recruits expected to complete their police training in March, the mayor and police chief on Monday welcomed a new class of police recruits and praised them for heeding the call to improve public safety in New Orleans, The Associated Press reported.
“It is a tough time, there is no doubt about it,” Landrieu told the recruits at an NOPD training facility in eastern New Orleans. He then thanked them “for stepping up to the plate.”
Since Landrieu took office, the NOPD has lost 500 officers and continues to lose officers faster than it can replace them.
In an open letter to Landrieu earlier this month, Police Association of New Orleans president Michael Glasser said the mayor must shoulder the blame for the dismal state of affairs within the NOPD because he turned his back on the NOPD.
NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison dismissed those claims as “foolish and ludicrous.”
The Landrieu administration has also found itself being increasingly criticized by French Quarter business owners and residents as the Vieux Carré has been hit with a rash of armed robberies and violent assaults over the past few months.
The mayor has requested help from the Feds and Louisiana State Troopers to keep New Orleans safe but has been unsuccessful thus far.
Harrison encouraged the recruits to “dig deep” last week, telling them that “the program was designed to be difficult.”
The recruit class that began its training last week, the third class since last fall, includes 12 people with military backgrounds and 17 people who do not live in New Orleans. The oldest member of the class is 49 and the youngest is 23.
Landrieu told The Associated Press that the recruits are the state’s best-paid. “They deserve it because they have one of the toughest jobs,” Landrieu said. “Our recruits are being held to higher standards.”
Meanwhile, New Orleans businessman Sidney Torres released a second commercial last week drawing attention to unsafe conditions in the French Quarter.
Torres, who said he was compelled to speak out about the rise in violent crime in the French Quarter after his home was burglarized and a bar near his mother’s home was robbed by masked gunmen, has said repeatedly that New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the NOPD’s top brass need to be held accountable for the spike in violent crime.
The former owner of SDT Waste Management Company has organized a website, www.keepthefrenchquartersafe.com, to give a voice to those who are frustrated with the rising tide of violent crime in New Orleans.
This article originally published in the January 19, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
