NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Police Department can begin ending its longstanding federal oversight, a judge ruled Tuesday in response to a request from the city and the Justice Department to wind down the monitoring program.
U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan said the police department has transformed itself into a more transparent and accountable agency, even though work remains to be done over the next two years while the program is ended.
โThe court is tremendously proud of the achievements the NOPD has made,โ Morgan said during a hearing. โThe hard work of the civilian and sworn members of the NOPD paid off. The NOPD is a far different agency from the one that spawned the DOJ investigation in 2011.โ
The city filed a last-minute motion asking to end federal oversight immediately, but Morgan rejected it, describing it as unnecessary โpolitical gamesmanship.โ
โThe city cannot have it both ways,โ she said.
In 2013, the City of New Orleans agreed to what it called โthe nationโs most expansiveโ federal oversight plan after a U.S. Justice Department investigationย found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity. The department had long engaged in mistreatment of the cityโs Black community and been plagued by high-profile scandals including aย 1994 murder ordered by a corrupt officerย and anย attempt to cover-up police killings of unarmed civiliansย in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Althoughย critics say the police departmentย hasn’t done enough to change the department and restore the public’s trust, Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told Morgan during a Monday hearing that the NOPD has established a โnew culture.โ
In the years since oversight started, the department has created a framework of audits and data analysis, increased transparency by revising and publishing online training materials and policies, and enhanced efforts to cut down on longtime issues such asย payroll fraud, police officials said.
โThis is the way we do business nowadays,โ Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon told the judge Monday.
Morgan praised the department for its transformation but reminded the city that more work remains.
โOne thing you want is to put these procedures in place in a way that you donโt slip, you donโt backslide. Thatโs why all the safeguards you put in place matter,” Morgan said Monday. “And thatโs why itโs important, I think, to have the involvement of the monitors and the DOJ (Department of Justice) and the court, until everyoneโs sure all the policies are in place and that theyโll survive changes in leadership and changes in officers.โ
During a public comment period, advocacy groups and watchdogs raised a host of concerns that police officials say they are trying to address.
An initiative to establish community advisory boards to meet with and provide recommendations to the police has by almost all accounts languished, though the city appointed a full-time staffer in December to try and revive these groups in the coming months.
Detectives still struggle to handle high sex crime caseloads, leading to far fewer getting solved than the national average. In the past three weeks, NOPD officials say they assigned eight more detectives to work on these cases, bringing the total number of officers from 17 to 25.
And in a city that’s just over 50% Black, nearly 90% of police uses of force targeted Black people last year, the cityโs Office of the Independent Police Monitor reported. A court-appointed federal monitors reviewed the NOPD’s use of force and concluded there was no evidence of bias based on Justice Department analysis. The NOPD also plans to hire Sigma Squared, a bias consulting firm co-founded by Harvard University economist Roland Fryer, to improve its analysis of potential bias in its policing. Fryer did not respond to a request for comment.
โIt’s a demonstration that we’re going above and beyond minimum requirements,โ Gernon told the judge Monday.
But Antonia Mar, an organizer with the advocacy group New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police, said she felt as if federal and NOPD officials had largely โshrugged their shoulders at community inputโ following hundreds of pages of public comments โ mostly critical of the NOPD โ and testimony submitted to the court in the past several months. Mar and other police reform advocates said they felt as if the NOPD was rushing to make long overdue changes at the last minute.
The city also revived an old motion Friday asking Morgan to end federal oversight immediately. But she rejected it. Instead, the judge said she was sticking to theย joint motionย by the city and Justice Department that requested she grant a two-year โsustainment periodโ to allow time for the NOPD to fix outstanding problems and demonstrate that existing reforms remained in place.
More improvements are needed before the city can fully exit federal oversight, Jonas Geissler, a Justice Department attorney, told Morgan on Monday. The Justice Department will continue to review audits, policies and data throughout the sustainment period, he said.
โThe object here is not perfection, the object here is constitutional policing with a durable remedy,โ Geissler said. โLet us not make perfection be the enemy of good and let us not settle for less than good.โ
