NEW ORLEANS (AP) — 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 monitoring.
The police department has become a more transparent and accountable agency, though work remains to be done, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan said during a hearing.
Morgan approved a two-year “sustainment period” to allow the NOPD to fix outstanding problems and show that reforms remain in place while federal monitoring and support continue. The decision follows a joint motion filed by the city and Justice Department in September last year.
“The court is tremendously proud of the achievements the NOPD has made,” Morgan said. “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.”
A transformed police department
In 2013, the city 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 mistreated the city’s Black community and was plagued by high-profile scandals, including a 1994 murder ordered by a corrupt officer and an attempt to cover-up police killings of unarmed civilians after Hurricane Katrina.
Although critics say the police department hasn't done enough, Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told Morgan during a Monday court hearing that the NOPD has established a “new culture.”
The department has created a framework of audits and data analysis, increased transparency by revising and publishing online training materials and policies, bolstered disciplinary processes, and enhanced efforts to cut down on longtime issues such as payroll fraud, police officials said.
The judge’s ruling was “a huge milestone,” Kirkpatrick said.
“What’s important during this two-year period, we stay the course,” she said. “There will be no pulling back.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
An 11th-hour legal maneuver
The city revived a long-dormant motion late Friday asking to end federal oversight immediately, but Morgan rejected it.
The judge denied another city request to bring on counsel from the state’s Republican attorney general, Liz Murrill. Murrill told The Associated Press that she would appeal the judge’s orders to end oversight sooner because the city had already completed and maintained most of the reform requirements. She said that federal oversight of the city’s police wrested control from the city's residents and their elected officials and was too “bureaucratized, expensive, unproductive and far too expansive.”
City Council President J.P. Morrell blasted Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Murrill's attempt to end oversight immediately, calling it “offensive.” He and several city councilmembers said they were not consulted beforehand and pressed for the city to finish the reform process.
In a statement Monday, Cantrell praised the police department for its progress but said oversight should have ended already because the reform goals “were achieved years ago.”
Policing reforms still in progress
Watchdogs raised a host of concerns during a monthslong public comment period, many tied to original mandates from the city's 2013 reform pact with the Justice Department. Police officials told the judge they are now trying to address some of the most pressing concerns.
An initiative to establish community advisory boards to provide recommendations to police has by almost all accounts languished, though the city appointed a full-time staffer in December to try and recalibrate these groups in the coming months.
Detectives still handle a high caseload of sex crimes, leading to far fewer resolutions 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 to 25. Julie Ford, an advocate, said the NOPD “continues to struggle with the effectiveness of their investigations into sexual assault cases.”
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 monitor reviewed the NOPD's use of force and concluded there was no evidence of bias. The NOPD plans to hire Sigma Squared, a consulting firm co-founded by Harvard University economist Roland Fryer, to improve its analysis.
Police officials have said that contracting Fryer is an example of the department going above and beyond the requirements of federal oversight.
Community concerns remain
“One underlying message was clear: The work is not done and we need the community to recognize that and to continue engaging,” the city's Independent Police Monitor Stella Cziment said.
Marvin Arnold, an organizer with the police watchdog group Eye on Surveillance, had long drawn attention to alleged conflicts of interest among federal monitors overseeing the NOPD, prompting dozens of concerned public comments. Arnold said he felt Morgan did not substantively engage with these concerns, which “reinforces the idea that the public comment was a dog and pony show.”
Belden “Noonie Man” Batiste, who chairs the civic advocacy group New Orleans United Front, protested in front of the court as recently as Monday to oppose ending federal oversight.
Still, Batiste said he appreciated that the judge directly addressed the broad array of issues he and others had shared with her. He noted that given the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump — who has sought to curtail federal oversight of police — it was smart to lock the city's police into another two years of federal monitoring.
“Sometimes you can have a debate, and you can walk away either with nothing or a little something," Batiste said. "Going to sustainment, that’s something.”
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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