New Orleans wants to end federal oversight of its police. Critics aren’t convinced

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The city of New Orleans and the U.S. Justice Department are pushing to end more than a decade of police oversight that was ordered in response to a long history of mistreatment of African Americans and notorious corruption, including a 1994 murder ordered by a crooked cop and an attempt to cover up the killings of unarmed civilians after Hurricane Katrina.

Critics say the reform effort is hardly a success story that should be replicated nationwide. At a Tuesday hearing, members of the public shared personal experiences of police brutality and cited continued racial disparities in use of force, poor handling of sex crimes and lackluster efforts to engage the community. One elderly Black man got down on his knees to beg the judge to keep oversight in place.

The city agreed to what it called “the nation’s most expansive” federal oversight plan in 2013 after a U.S. Justice Department investigation found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity.

Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told The Associated Press that the goals have been met: “We’ve built that system.”

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Almost everyone acknowledges that the department has been transformed, with improved policies and leadership, but officers still disproportionately use force against Black people, and community activists say they’re still not being adequately consulted.

“It is the community that is going to be served by the NOPD, needs to feel included by the NOPD, heard by the NOPD. And I cannot say today that that has been achieved,” said Stella Cziment, who runs the Office of the Independent Police Monitor, a civilian-run city agency.

A success story to replicate in Minneapolis?

One of the lawyers overseeing the consent decree formed a nonprofit and hired former NOPD leaders to manage oversight of Minneapolis police in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, prompting a public rebuke by one of his colleagues.

“I think it’s a great, great, great conflict of interest among a lot of other ethical and integrity issues,” Ashley Burns told deputy monitor David Douglass, whose Effective Law Enforcement for All group won the Minnesota contract.

“You don’t give a damn about Minneapolis or the people of New Orleans,” Burns said to Douglass during a public meeting on Oct. 29.

Douglass denied any conflict of interest, and championed the NOPD’s evolution: “Many of the practices here are serving as a model for the nation and for other departments,” he told the AP.

Ready to move on?

In public comments, New Orleans residents have pointed to payroll fraud allegations, a corruption charge involving the mayor’s bodyguard and rape cases that go unsolved far more often than the national average. But the oversight should still be seen as a “success story,” particularly given the department’s notorious history, said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the anti-corruption nonprofit, the Metropolitan Crime Commission.

Any department with more than 900 members will have some officers crossing lines, but that won’t ”necessarily mean that the entire department is corrupt or mismanaged,” Goyeneche said.

Jonathan Aronie, the lead federal monitor, cites improved policies and training, and says accurate data now enables auditors — and the public — to hold officers accountable. The numbers no longer show unconstitutional patterns or practices, he said — and this should be seen as a floor, not the ceiling, for policing in New Orleans.

Racial disparities in use of force

But 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. That’s similar to the racial disparity cited by the Justice Department more than a decade ago in calling for “a searching review and a meaningful response.”

“If we haven’t achieved the goal, why would we eliminate a structure that protects New Orleanians’ civil rights?” said Rachel Taber, an organizer with the immigrant rights group Unión Migrante.

Police leaders take disproportionate physical force and arrest numbers extremely seriously, but that doesn’t necessarily mean officers are doing anything wrong, the superintendent said.

“When we see disparities, we then ask the question, is there a bias behind the disparity? Not all disparities equal bias,” Kirkpatrick said.

The data show that officers use force against Black people 10 times more frequently than on white people. But because roughly 9 in 10 uses of force led to arrests among Black and white people alike in 2023, the police and federal monitors say it is not necessarily driven by racial bias.

When activists confronted federal monitors with the disparity data, Aronie said the oversight has focused on improving policies and structures, given “the difficulties of solving bias in the same way it exists across almost every institution in the U.S.”

“I would like to live in a city where those differences in practice reflect in the statistics before NOPD exits oversight,” responded community activist Zunyana Crier.

Struggling with community engagement

Community surveys required by the decree haven’t been updated since 2019. Neighborhood advisory boards that were supposed to facilitate engagement have largely been left to “wither and die,” Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon told a public meeting, adding that the city intends to fix the program.

Police accountability groups also cite the lack of Spanish and Vietnamese language accessibility in the public comment process.

Community activist W.C. Johnson remains cynical: “When you’re not being taken seriously, when you’re not being included, why waste time?”

If U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan agrees to end the consent decree, the oversight will continue for two more years under a “sustainment period.”

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Associated Press reporter Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.

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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 the social platform X: @jack_brook96