Woes continue for NOPD as approval ratings drop

2nd March 2015   ·   0 Comments

Almost from the moment that online loans legitimate NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison announced the reassignment of 22 officers from desk or support jobs to street patrol duty, the impact of the move was blunted, WWL News reported last week.

Civil district court judges and the district attorney complained about losing officers dedicated to their specific work, and critics questioned if the move was sweeping enough to have any real impact on a department that’s losing about 10 officers a month to resignation and retirement.

Police union leaders have attributed the departure of veteran officers to low officer morale about changes made to the NOPD’s off-duty detail system, a miniscule pay raise and a lack of support from the Landrieu administration.

With approximately 100 officers on long-term leave or suspension and only about 300 officers available to answer emergency calls across all ranks, districts and shifts, Harrison finds himself in a tough spot.

“Our No. 1 priority is to put as many officers on the street as possible while we continue to work aggressively to grow the department,” NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble told WWL. “To make it happen, we eliminated these administrative positions that have traditionally been held by officers and replaced them with civilians where possible. The goal is to permanently move officers from behind desks where possible and we will continue to look for ways to make it happen.”

Accomplishing that goal ap­pears to have only gotten tougher when Harrison issued the De­cember 14 transfer order, WWL reported.

According to public records, at least seven of the transferred officers either retired or were placed on administrative leave rather than responding to emergencies.

Another was sent back to his previous assignment and yet another is said to be continuing with previous support duties even though the documents indicate he’s out on patrol.

One of the transferred officers, Brenda Bevley, told WWL that she was wrongly suspended and put on leave without pay after she complained about being moved from the day shift in the public records office to nights on patrol.

Bevley, a 23-year veteran said that she had no problem with being assigned to street patrols again, but needed time to deal with family and medical issues but was placed on leave without pay and then suspension when she tried to take vacation.

“It’s sorry to even see that (the department is) requesting help from all over, different agencies, (and) I’m here and I’m personal loans davao city ready to work,” Bevley said. “I was actually on my way to work and was told I was off.”

Bevley filed a formal complaint with the Public Integrity Bureau last month, but NOPD contends she failed to show up for work on Feb. 6. Four days later, she was decommissioned, stripped of her badge and gun, and now the department says she’s the one under PIB investigation.

“I have no police powers and I guess I’m just a citizen at this time,” she told WWL. “A citizen with the freedom of speech.”

Bevley is still a member of the NOPD and assigned to the Administrative Duty Division. So are Bruce Bono Jr., Shannon Carr and Gary Barnes, three more officers who were transferred to street patrol duty back in December.

Gregory Clay, who had been in the mailroom, decided to retire rather than take a new patrol assignment in the 5th District. And Lt. Fred Austin retired after he was transferred from the Field Operations Bureau office to the 7th District, according to WWL.

Edmund Henry was transferred from Civil District Court to the platoons, but was sent straight back to court when the judges complained.

“The judges start making their phone calls, people retire, people call in sick, by the time you’re through, if you have half that many show up in a district you’re lucky,” Glasser told WWL. “And you’re talking about eight districts, so you’re talking about one or two cops per district, you got three watches. It’s negligible impact.”

WWL reported that looking at the department as a whole, the impact may have been even less than negligible. In the two months since the 22 officers were transferred to street duty, Clay and 22 other officers left the force entirely.

Additionally, 13 officers who were not transferred to street duty also went on the Admini­strative Duty Division list, further limiting resources for Harrison.

Gamble told WWL that Supt. Harrison is continuing to look for more positions that can be turned over to civilian staff, to free up more officers to answer emergency calls. That’s just part of a larger strategy to boost the department’s depleted ranks, which features an aggressive hiring campaign, lower education standards, calling up reserve officers and creating more flexible assignments for ranking officers at headquarters.

As reports of an undermanned NOPD began to surface last year, both the Metropolitan Crime Commission and the New Or­leans Office instant cash loan nottingham of the Inspector General said that the embattled department needed to do a better job of managing its available personnel. Both the IG and the MCC recommended hiring civilians to perform office duties to free up additional police officers to boost street patrols.

In other NOPD news, an NOPD sergeant was arrested Tuesday and accused of falsifying off-duty detail time sheets related to detail work at the Home Depot in Central City.

NOPD Sgt. Ashish Shah, a 17-year veteran, was booked with theft and filing false public records Tuesday, WWL reported.

The television station acquired the arrest report Wednesday, a day after NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble declined to provide details of Shah’s arrest, citing “an ongoing criminal investigation.”

After his arrest, Shah was suspended by the NOPD.

Shah allegedly falsified off-duty detail time sheets between July and October 2014 through the NOPD’s Office of Secondary Employment, the office created by the Landrieu administration in an effort to reform an off-duty detail system the U.S. Department of Justice dubbed the NOPD’s “aorta of corruption.”

“Mr. Shah received compensation from Home Depot, via the Office of Secondary Employ­ment, for the entire time of his scheduled working hours,” the report said, “but he wasn’t actually at work at the times indicated on the documents he submitted for payment.”

Although the report does not indicate how many work hours were falsely added to the time sheets or how much money Shar allegedly made, he was booked in a charge of theft “over the amount of #1,500.”

Shah’s attorney Eric Hessler told WWL that his client cannot dispute the accusations until seeing the dates and evidence investigators say they have compiled.

“The allegations are that, on numerous occasions, he arrived at the detail late and then charged for the full amount of time. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not,” Hessler said. “But it seems to me that they’re treating this in a manner that should have been handled administratively, first and foremost, before they let it get to this point.”

Hessler, who also serves as spokesman and lead counsel for the Police Association of New Orleans, said the circumstances leading to Shah’s arrest raise questions about the management of the NOPD’s Office of Secondary Employ­ment. The of­fice was created in 2013, over police union opposition, to replace the largely unregulated moonlighting detail system that a Department of Justice report derided as “the aorta of corruption” payday loan locations in ri within the NOPD prior to the federal consent decree.

“If the OPSE was managed properly, this should have been identified early on and corrected,” Hessler said. “If it was a set-up, and they allowed him to keep continuing to do it, I’d have to question the motives of handling it that way, also. If he was wrong and did something wrong, it should have been addressed. But it seems a bit disingenuous to say this occurred for four months and nothing was ever said or done.

“There certainly are times he would have been late for the detail, but that happens. I don’t know how (the OPSE’s management system) works, but apparently it’s not working that well. If this was known by OPSE or the department, I just wonder why they let it continue, as opposed to taking action immediately, whatever the action may be.”

The NOPD said Tuesday that its Public Integrity Bureau “was made aware of possible criminal behavior” involving Shah last fall and launched an investigation September 30. Shah, who was placed on emergency suspension following his arrest, most recently had been assigned to the department’s 4th District policing Algiers.

Shah’s bond was set Tuesday night at $10,000, but Magistrate Commissioner Robert Blackburn ordered the officer released on his own recognizance. The next hearing in Shah’s case was set for March 24.

Reform of the detail system is part of a 492-point federally mandated consent decree aimed at bringing the NOPD up to federal standards for constitutional policing.

The NOPD has been under a consent decree since August 2013.

Meanwhile, satisfaction with the NOPD dropped by double digits, according to the bi-annual survey conducted by the New Orleans Crime Commission, with less than half of the citizens surveyed approving of the job being done by the NOPD.

From 2013 to 2014, overall citizen satisfaction by New Orleanians dropped from 60 percent to 48 percent, with the drop similar along racial lines. Black New Orleanian satisfaction dropped from 61 percent to 48 percent and white satisfaction among New Orleanians dropped from to 64 percent to 45 percent.

The news comes with the department still reeling from several scandals including five detectives’ failure to follow up on 86 percent of sexual assault allegations and the turning off of a body camera before a suspect was shot in the head by an NOPD officer. The latter went spot loans bad credit unreported to the public for two days, resulting in the unexpected retirement of then NOPD Supt. Ronal Serpas.

“The drop in citizen satisfaction with NOPD in the current survey is cause for concern, but not panic,” Michael Cowan, chairman of the New Orleans Crime Commission, told WWL.

Cowan told WWL that the drop in satisfaction with the NOPD may be due to the depleted ranks of the police force and the subsequent rise in violent crime across the city. “In our judgment, these results reflect recent rising rates of violent crime coupled with the widespread awareness that the number of New Orleans police officers available to patrol our streets has dropped to a dangerously low level.”

WWL reported that among the rise in violent crime, New Orleans averaged more than one non-fatal shooting per day — 398 — in 2014, compared to 322 in 2013 — a 24 percent increase. A WWL-TV report in January discovered the NOPD had 1,148 commissioned officers, well off its target of 1,600.

While less than half of respondents said they were satisfied with the NOPD, 77 percent said they felt safe in their neighborhoods—compared to 81 percent in March of 2014 — though only 44 percent said they felt safe in outside of their neighborhoods in the latest survey.

The survey fielded the opinions of 600 adults during February 2-5, according to the commission. It has a four percent margin of error.

“I’m not at all surprised by the lower approval rating residents gave the NOPD,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly. “People are tire of the violent crime as well as the lies and deception about the NOPD. It’s time for real change, not just cosmetic change or smoke and mirrors.”

“As bad as these numbers are, I think the real disapproval numbers are much worse,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “Nobody’s buying all the mind games being used to try to trick residents into believing that things aren’t as bad as they appear on the evening news.

“There’s no denying it, we’re in trouble,” Aha added. “But it’s even more dangerous than it needs to be because we can’t get a straight answer out of City Hall or the NOPD.”

This article originally published in the March 2, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.