NOPD fighting a losing battle, MCC study finds
5th June 2017 · 0 Comments
The New Orleans Police Department’s efforts to get a handing on a sharp rise in violent crime is being impeded by its continuing struggle to retain officers in the midst of a severe manpower shortage, according to the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
According to the study, the NOPD’s manpower shortage is directly linked to the rise in violent crime as well as a dramatic drop in the number of arrests.
According to the study, violent crime rose by 27 percent between 2013 and 2015, based on data from the Uniform Crime Reports the NOPD submitted to the FBI.
WWL News reported that during an overlapping period from 2013 to 2016, overall arrests dropped by 44 percent, although arrests for violent crime during the same period only dropped by 16 percent.
Among the factors that have been attributed to the sharp drop in the number of arrests has been the NOPD’s deep cuts to its traffic and narcotics units in individual districts in response to the department’s manpower shortage.
Until last year, the NOPD had been losing officers to defections, retirement, termination and arrests faster than it could replace them and the department has lost more than 400 officers since New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010.
“Traffic and drug enforcement have gone off a cliff. There’s virtually none,” said MCC President Rafael Goyeneche. “When you don’t have proactive policing, you don’t have officers engaging with some of the offenders until they commit violent crimes.”
According to the report, felony arrests within the NOPD have dropped by 16 percent since 2013, with felony narcotics arrests within that category dropping by 55 percent.
Those numbers perhaps explain whey there were more fatal drug overdoses than homicides committed in New Orleans in 2016. The NOPD is still implementing a federally mandated, 492-point consent decree aimed at raising the troubled police department to federal standards for constitutional policing, which began in August 2013.
Despite the NOPD’s ongoing woes and challenges, Goyeneche said the department has improved its record with regard to arresting violent felons (44 percent) and raised the number of cases accepted by the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office from 73 percent in 2013 to 81 percent in 2015.
“This problem is not because police officers are sitting in donut shops or not working, it’s that there’s not enough of them,” Goyeneche said.
This steep decline in felony narcotics arrests is directly tied to the NOPD manpower shortage, Goyeneche said. The department stands at 1,159 officers, down from 1,540 officers in 2010.
The decline was initially brought on by a hiring freeze imposed by Mayor Mitch Landrieu to address a budget crisis. Even with a recent recruiting push to boost the numbers, the department has remained depleted due to attrition and a national shortage of qualified applicants seeking to join law enforcement.
“The problem comes when you’re 500 officers short, these are the areas that you start to suffer in, such as proactive policing,” NOPD Capt. Michael Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, told WWL. “Unless the staffing improves dramatically, and it hasn’t, and it won’t, we have a problem.”
Glasser and others are anticipating that low troop strength will remain a persistent problem. Current NOPD recruiting numbers support those claims.
WWL reported that the NOPD set a goal of hiring 150 officers for the past two years and budgeted accordingly. But not only did the department fall short both years, the number of officers leaving the department almost matched the new hires, leaving the NOPD stagnant.
Recruiting prospects for 2017 don’t appear much better. No new academy classes have been launched in 2017, and the only group currently in classroom training are nine recruits who were hired on Dec. 30.
NOPD officials said a new class of about 28 officers is expected to start on June 5, but that will do little to boost the numbers without a dramatic hiring surge.
Donovan Livaccari, spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police, told WWL that something dramatic may be needed if the NOPD wants to avoid a “crisis.” Along with Glasser, he is advocating a pay raise for existing officers, stretched out over several years to boost retention as well as recruiting.
“It’s absolutely the core problem,” Livaccari said. “The number of officers that we have impacts every aspect of the police department, from moral to enforcement. It’s absolutely true that a police department’s best recruiting tool is the word-of-mouth from existing officers and, right now, that’s not working in our favor.”
The City of New Orleans released a response to the report late Monday evening:
“As the Metropolitan Crime Commission points out, the NOPD is attacking violent crime as a priority. We are proud of this focus rather than regressive practices like ‘stop and frisk’ that increase arrests while violating the rights of citizens and further driving a wedge between the police and community.
“The Metropolitan Crime Commission fails to tell the full story about anything including our efforts to bolster the manpower and resources to our police. Since 2010, police have received a 15 percent raise, we have had 12 new recruit classes and added 300 recruit graduates. Currently, we have 37 recruits in the academy.
“On funding, the NOPD’s budget has increased seven straight years to help make our neighborhoods safer. In 2010, the total NOPD budget was $109M. Today it stands at $150M, to include $11M for overtime and to pay for more than 20 new civilian positions.
“We recognize the work needed to make our communities safer and we’re working every day to make that happen. No one can demo that when looking at the facts.”
This article originally published in the June 5, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
