By Canadian Press

Judge says the New Orleans Police Department can begin the process of ending federal oversight

Jan 14, 2025 | 8:59 AM

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans Police Department can begin winding down its longstanding federal oversight, a judge ruled Tuesday in response to a request from the city and the Justice Department to start wrapping up 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 more work remains to be done over the next two years.

“The court is tremendously proud of the achievements the NOPD has made,” Morgan said during a hearing. “The 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.”

In 2013, the City of New Orleans agreed to what it called “the nation’s most expansive” federal oversight plan after a U.S. Justice Department investigation found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity. The department had long engaged in mistreatment of the city’s Black community and been plagued by high-profile scandals including a 1994 murder ordered by a corrupt cop and an attempt to cover-up police killings of unarmed civilians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Although critics say the police department 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 “new culture.”

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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 as payroll fraud, police officials said.

“This is the way we do business nowadays,” Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon told the judge Monday.

Morgan praised the department for its transformation but reminded the city that more work remains.

“One thing you want is to put these procedures in place in a way that you don’t slip, you don’t backslide. That’s why all the safeguards you put in place matter,” Morgan said Monday. “And that’s why it’s important, I think, to have the involvement of the monitors and the DOJ (Department of Justice) and the court, until everyone’s sure all the policies are in place and that they’ll survive changes in leadership and changes in officers.”

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 city’s 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.

“It’s a demonstration that we’re going above and beyond minimum requirements,” 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 “shrugged their shoulders at community input” following hundreds of pages of public comments — mostly critical of the NOPD — 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 evening, requesting Morgan terminate federal oversight immediately.

Instead, Morgan said she was sticking to the joint motion filed in September by the city and Justice Department that requested she grant a two-year “sustainment period” 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.

“The object here is not perfection, the object here is constitutional policing with a durable remedy,” Geissler said. “Let us not make perfection be the enemy of good and let us not settle for less than good.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on X: @jack_brook96

Jack Brook, The Associated Press