Should NOPD have less federal oversight?
23rd December 2024 · 0 Comments
By Michelle Liu
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — Is the New Orleans Police Department a transformed agency, following best practices in constitutional policing? Or is the city’s police force still inextricably linked to the wrongs of its past, plagued with community mistrust, racial bias and other problems?
These were the two divergent narratives that emerged Tuesday (Dec. 17) in a federal courtroom downtown, where more than two dozen people opined on whether U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan should begin to wind down the NOPD’s consent decree over the next two years.
Since 2013, the NOPD has been under federal oversight, following a reform agreement aimed at overhauling nearly every aspect of the agency. Now, Morgan is considering a motion by the city of New Orleans and the Department of Justice to move the NOPD to a “sustainment period,” where the police department would be expected to maintain its reforms with reduced monitoring.
Both the city and federal authorities say the NOPD is broadly in compliance with the consent decree and has implemented reforms to bring it in line with constitutional standards. On Tuesday, top leaders with the city’s fire department and EMS agency told Morgan that they agreed.
“They’ve established a new culture that will be self-sustaining,” said New Orleans Fire Department Superintendent Roman Nelson.
State officials, including Attorney General Liz Murrill, want Morgan to go further and end the consent decree altogether, as the city had previously sought in 2022. Morgan Brungard, of Murrill’s office, told the judge Tuesday that over the last decade, the consent decree has cost the city an estimated $150 million, with much of that money lining “D.C. lawyers’ pockets,” referring to the court-appointed monitoring team that measures the department’s progress toward compliance.
“Because the consent decree has done its job and remedied the original problem, keeping it in place any longer harms the state and its residents,” Brungard said.
But other speakers expressed far less optimism in the department’s ability to police itself absent federal oversight.
Independent Police Monitor Stella Cziment argued that Morgan should consider a ruling of partial compliance, keeping certain problem areas – like the NOPD’s handling of sex crimes, uses of force, misconduct and community engagement – under full monitoring. Or, Cziment suggested, Morgan could set an extended sustainment period of four years, instead of two.
Cziment runs the city’s designated cop watchdog agency, which does not play a direct role in the consent decree process. She said community feedback gathered by her office indicates that the NOPD has “failed a core tenet” of the consent decree – building community trust.
Several speakers also pointed to the failure of the department to help build out strong Police Community Advisory Boards, once intended under the consent decree to help form the backbone of the department’s community engagement.
“Community outreach has felt like a dog-and-pony show,” said Marvin Arnold with the grassroots group Eye on Surveillance.
The city’s Black and immigrant communities continue to feel frustrated, distrustful and slighted during police encounters, individual commenters and community groups said at the hearing.
“Finally, you’re giving us a chance to come before you to let you know what the Black community feels about getting out of the consent decree and going into the sustainment period. We are completely against going into that sustainment period,” said Edward Parker. “I tell you, NOPD has not been to us what they should have been.”
Julie Ford, a survivor of sexual violence who now researches the NOPD’s handling of sex crimes, said improvements are still needed in that area. The current proposed sustainment plan doesn’t address large caseloads and understaffing in the department’s Special Victims Section. The NOPD also needs a plan to ensure that sexual assault kits are tested in a timely manner, given recent backlogs, Ford said.
Other groups, including the ACLU of Louisiana and New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police, or NOCOP, brought up recent statistics showing racial disparities in arrests and use of force.
NOPD has offered its own analyses of those numbers, which use a methodology that has not found indicators of racial bias, to dismiss community concerns, said Kristi Dayemo with NOCOP.
Claude Schlesinger, a lawyer representing the Fraternal Order of Police, the city’s largest police officers’ association, said the department has embraced the consent decree, pointing to extensive reforms and expanded transparency – from hosting weekly community meetings and publishing crime statistics and policies online to revising the disciplinary process and establishing a review board for use of force.
“I ask the court to keep all the comments today in perspective,” he said. “Compare our department to any other agency in the state. We are ready to begin sustainment.”
Schlesinger believes the NOPD has become a magnet for criticism because it is significantly more transparent than other law enforcement agencies in the state.
“It’s harder to criticize what you don’t know,” Schlesinger said.
At last Tuesday’s hearing, Morgan said she will take public comments into consideration as she decides whether to grant the city and the DOJ’s motion to move to sustainment.
“The public has made this no easy decision for the court,” Cziment said after the hearing.
Another court hearing is scheduled for January 8.
This article originally published in the December 23, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
