NOPD recruiting shows minimal gains despite aggressive efforts

Despite using online ads, recruiting initiatives at out-of-state military bases and a streamlined screening and hiring process, the New Orleans Police Department’s efforts to boost its ranks haw shown only minimal gains.

While NOPD officials have said that the department is on track to meet its goal of hiring 150 new officers in 2016, the numbers show that the NOPD is still losing officers faster than it can replace them. Nola.com reported recently that the NOPD’s net gain stands at only 10 officers as the troubled department continues to lose officers to retirement and defections.

NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble told Nola.com that while the department has added 70 new recruits to its ranks this year, it has lost 60 officers to retirement, resignation, termination and death.

The NOPD’s severe manpower shortage has led to longer response times for civilians calling for police assistance and has stretched the department thin. During major events like Mardi Gras, the department has had to rely on additional support from sheriff’s deputies, retired NOPD officers, state troopers, and campus police from the University of New Orleans and Tulane University.

The NOPD has lost more than 400 officers since New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010. While the City of New Orleans says the NOPD needs 1,600 officers to keep the city safe, it currently has only about 1,100 officers. In an effort to boost the NOPD’s ranks, the City of New Orleans has convinced the New Orleans City Council to do away with its residency rule that requires cops, firefighters and EMS workers to live in Orleans Parish and persuaded the Civil Service Commission to do away with the hiring rule that required NOPD recruits to have completed at least 60 hours of college credit. The NOPD has also provided bonuses to veteran officers who successfully recruit new officers.

Two recruit classes completed their training thus far in 2016 and two more classes are planned for the second half of the year, according to Gamble.

Gamble told Nola.com that recruits who dropped out or were released after they were hired will still count toward the hiring goal of 150 for this year. Because of that policy, the recruiting rate appears to be outpacing the departure of veteran officers.

Gamble said the department gained 136 new officers in 2015 and lost 106.

While NOPD officials recently reported a reduction in response times for officer assistance, the numbers are somewhat unreliable because the statistics do not take into account the number of complaints for which residents or witnesses give up pr leave because they grow tired or frustrated about waiting on police.

The NOPD began assigning additional officers to street patrols earlier this year in an effort to improve response times, utilizing officers who were previously assigned to desk duties.

Police union leaders have attributed the department’s difficulty in maintaining veteran officers and recruiting new cops to the ongoing federally mandated NOPD consent decree aimed at overhauling the department, changes to the NOPD’s off-duty paid detail system, low officer morale and a lack of support for officers from the Landrieu administration.

Nola.com reported that in the wake of the recent killing of law enforcement officers in Dallas, Texas and Baton Rouge, La., the NOPD has experienced greater interest from prospective recruits. The NOPD said it was receiving about 11 applications a day during the first six and a half months of the year but saw that number rise to 17 a day in the wake of the police killings.

Other police departments across the country also reported greater interest in joining them in the wake of the police shootings, including the Dallas Police Department, which told The Washington Post that its daily applications rose from about 11 a day to 40 a day between July 8, the day five officers lost their lives, and July 20.

This article originally published in the August 15, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.