Mitch Landrieu Asks Feds To Help Fix The NOPD

[Patrick Degan]

The newly-sworn mayor of New Orleans is wasting no time. Just on his third day on the job:

May 5, 2010
New Orleans Asks U.S. to Help Police Department
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

NEW ORLEANS — Citing the need for “transformational change,” the city’s new mayor, Mitch Landrieu, announced on Wednesday that he was inviting the Justice Department to help restructure the troubled New Orleans Police Department.

“We have a systemic failure,” said Mr. Landrieu, who has been in office for less than three days. Speaking at a news conference, he said that the state and city governments would be involved in a sweeping reform of the police, but that “this was not going to get done without the help and the intervention and partnership of the Department of Justice.”

For a city to invite federal intervention in its police department is rare, and a testament to just how discontented New Orleanians have become with a police force that has been seen for years as corrupt, abusive and ineffective. Nearly four dozen community activists, some of whom stood next to the mayor at Wednesday’s news conference, sent a letter to the Department of Justice on Tuesday, urging federal oversight.

The Justice Department is now expected to conduct a top-down investigation of the police force, which would lead to some kind of legally binding agreement for a restructuring. Mr. Landrieu said he hoped Washington and the city could enter into a consent decree, which involves the appointment of a federal monitor to oversee reform.

In a statement, Alejandro Miyar, a Justice Department spokesman, said, “We will consider these requests to determine what action, if any, is appropriate.”

But Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, has made no secret of his opinion that the Police Department needs a major overhaul. On a visit to the city in March, Mr. Perez described the department as the most problematic in the country and made clear that all options were on the table, including a consent decree.

The investigation would look at patterns of misconduct by the New Orleans police, a more overarching form of scrutiny than the existing federal criminal investigations into specific incidents. There are at least eight such investigations into accusations of brutality and unjustified killings of citizens at the hands of the police, both immediately after Hurricane Katrina and in more recent years.

The most prominent of the investigations, which is examining shootings by the police on the Danziger Bridge days after the hurricane, leaving two people dead, has already led to guilty pleas from four former police officers. The accounts of the shootings from the officers described the strafing of unarmed civilians, the slaying of a mentally disabled man and a widespread and blatant police cover-up.

Mr. Landrieu has been searching for a new police chief since the moment he was elected in February, a search that is now down to two candidates and is expected to conclude soon.

A new independent police monitor was also appointed recently, and Mr. Landrieu announced on Wednesday that all police records requested by the monitor’s office would be turned over. The previous police chief, Warren Riley, who stepped down as Mr. Landrieu took office, had a contentious relationship with the monitor’s office and repeatedly refused requests for records.

“I have inherited a police force that has been described by many as one of the worst police departments in the country,” Mr. Landrieu wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. “It is clear that nothing short of a complete transformation is necessary and essential to ensure safety for the citizens of New Orleans.”

There are very few instances in which a city government actively invites federal involvement, said Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and an expert on police reform.

“It’s usually quite the other way around,” Mr. Walker said. “Typically there’s a lot of resistance and resentment.”

But given the endemic problems of the New Orleans police, he said, “this is an excellent idea — it establishes a collaborative relationship and it gets the ball rolling.”

Federal officials would have many issues to address, including a system of accountability that has apparently broken down and a stubbornly high crime rate.

“Tomorrow is not soon enough for me,” Mr. Landrieu said.

Warren Riley, the late superintendent, had an especially hostile relationship with the district attorney's office in New Orleans, which completely paralysed any cooperative effort between the force and the judicial system, leading to multiple incidents of serious criminal cases never being brought to a successful close and perpetrators, in some cases involved in murders, just walking off scot-free. Riley shielded rogue cops behind the power of his office, and his predecessor Eddie Compass did nothing to stop the department from turning into a sink of corruption and incompetence worse than it was under Arnesta Taylor and Joseph Orticke, the two chiefs under the misadministration of the generally useless Sidney Barthelemy. Landrieu is taking this problem very seriously, very unlike Clarence the Clown.

[The Yosemite Bear]

just how many times have the FBI "Cleaned up" the NOPD?

I seem to recall after the Vice Department did contract killings, and a few other unbelievable scandals, hell I even recall Harry Connick Sr. getting sent to the Fed Pen.

[Alyeska]

A big problem with the NOPD is that it continues to hire people from the same area. They would have an easier time reforming the NOPD if they used complete outsiders to completely restructure and rebuild from the ground up. However, this is big. And its difficult. There is also the problem that these outsiders would have to live in New Orleans and could potentially become corrupted.

New Orleans itself is a big part of the problem. The entire city needs to be cleaned up.

[Patrick Degan]

just how many times have the FBI "Cleaned up" the NOPD?

I seem to recall after the Vice Department did contract killings, and a few other unbelievable scandals, hell I even recall Harry Connick Sr. getting sent to the Fed Pen.

You recall wrong. Harry Connick Sr. never went to prison for anything. He was indicted for racketeering with actor Paul Burke but acquitted at trial and continued on in the office of DA until his retirement in 2003. He also ran that office with far greater efficiency than his successor, Eddie Jordan, who all but wrecked it in turning it into a haven for racial cronyism. Nor was the Vice division involved in contract killings. That was Officer Len Davis, the drug-dealing cop who was stupid enough to arrange the contract killing of a police brutality complainant on celphone which was being monitored by the FBI.

The Feds have never actually come in to clean out the NOPD. They've threatened to a couple of times but never followed up. Landrieu inviting the Justice Department to do so instead of being served a writ is a virtually unprecedented action.

[White Haven]

If he manages to pull it off, his career in local politics will be /steel/ clad.

[The Yosemite Bear]

yeah I recall all kinds of wierd shit but. sorry I got the details all fucked up. Yeah I remember Connick Sr. getting arrested and people talking about the possible effects on his son's carrier, I remember the contract killing of a police brutality witness by a cop that was part of a small group that was selling drugs as well..

got to work on the memories....

[Patrick Degan]

yeah I recall all kinds of wierd shit but. sorry I got the details all fucked up. Yeah I remember Connick Sr. getting arrested and people talking about the possible effects on his son's carrier, I remember the contract killing of a police brutality witness by a cop that was part of a small group that was selling drugs as well..

got to work on the memories....

The Len Davis affair was both comical and infamous. But nowhere near as infamous as the late police chief who shielded rogue killer cops to maintain the Blue Wall. The investigation into the Danziger Bridge murders —the real investigation— has only just begun.

[The Yosemite Bear]

do they really trash the instruments of street muscians like on Treme?

[Patrick Degan]

do they really trash the instruments of street muscians like on Treme?

I'm not certain, but it would not surprise me at all. The real NOPD have been pointlessly brutal toward ordinary bystanders, street drunks, street musicians, and some especially have their knives in for the Mardi Gras Indians for some fucking reason; they harass them almost every year and in 2006 there were beatings at what was a previously announced and otherwise peaceful event. There is probably at least one verifiable incident of cops trashing a street musician's instrument just like the incident depicted in Treme.

[Edward Yee]

The wider issue of gun rights aside... when the NRA and gun rights activists accused NOPD of going way over the top... how plausible is that? I vaguely recall something about the NOPD also ignoring/trying to subvert some court ruling against them regarding civilians' firearms after Katrina?

[Zed Snardbody]

The wider issue of gun rights aside... when the NRA and gun rights activists accused NOPD of going way over the top... how plausible is that? I vaguely recall something about the NOPD also ignoring/trying to subvert some court ruling against them regarding civilians' firearms after Katrina?

NRA to settle suit over Katrina gun seizures
Link to a sourced word document from George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal

Civilian firearms were ordered to be seized during the emergency seemingly with no intent to ever return them to rightful owners in what can be best described as a clusterfuck.

[Edward Yee]

... oh... oh MAN is the fail is strong here. So at one point the NOPD tried to get out of the whole court order to return the firearms by blaming unspecified other departments for the confiscations?

What exactly was the specified reason for the seizure anyway? The document makes it sound like it was practically "out of the blue" after Katrina. Heck, what was the specified reason to let "selected wealthy people" and armed security personnel keep their weapons?? If the document doesn't have any convenient omissions, it sounds like the aforementioned Warren Riley and Charles Nagin were deservedly (but only partially) held in contempt of court?

[The Yosemite Bear]

unarmed people are less likely to shoot you for looting.

[Alyeska]

unarmed people are less likely to shoot you for looting.

There were not any vigilante squads hunting down looters. The only time an armed person typically encountered a looter was when the looter approached the armed individuals house. I read a news article about an older individual who had supplies to last out in New Orleans and even had a generator. The noise of the generator attracted some individuals. They came up to the man and demanded he hand over the generator. He fired a single warning shot from his .357 and they left him alone.

A big problem with the police is that they weren't specifically trying to disarm individuals. They were disarming people in vehicles trying to flee New Orleans (people who could not reasonably be explained as a threat since they want to leave) in vehicles that got stopped at chechpoints. Or they disarmed survivors in their homes who were trying to last out the flood and protect their property. The two groups least likely to be a problem were the ones the police disarmed.

[Zed Snardbody]

I'm not terribly familiar with the situation but if I had to hazard a guess its probably "Were in a crisis! Everyone will be safer if weapons are off the street until things are better!"

Which at its core is flawed simply because its an illegal seizure of property without due process. Then you get into all the "gun" arguments and the like. Did it save lives? Maybe, but I bet dollars to doughnuts a lot of those saved lives were looters or criminals who might otherwise been shot by desperate scared people. Again, its a clusterfuck all around.

[Edward Yee]

For me the worst thing about the confiscations, both PR-wise and objectively speaking, was NOPD were "disarming the people" while being the department that at the time developed a reputation for fleeing by resignations or outright abandonment of the post.

[The Yosemite Bear]

unarmed people are less likely to shoot you for looting.

There were not any vigilante squads hunting down looters. The only time an armed person typically encountered a looter was when the looter approached the armed individuals house. I read a news article about an older individual who had supplies to last out in New Orleans and even had a generator. The noise of the generator attracted some individuals. They came up to the man and demanded he hand over the generator. He fired a single warning shot from his .357 and they left him alone.

A big problem with the police is that they weren't specifically trying to disarm individuals. They were disarming people in vehicles trying to flee New Orleans (people who could not reasonably be explained as a threat since they want to leave) in vehicles that got stopped at chechpoints. Or they disarmed survivors in their homes who were trying to last out the flood and protect their property. The two groups least likely to be a problem were the ones the police disarmed.

I was refering to the reports of the NOPD looting homes after KAtrina, so of course they were disarming the survivors to prevent them from shooting them when the robbed the house a week later.

[Edward Yee]

Oh... oh that's fucking great... disarm the people, then rob the place themselves, then flee the city... oh... oh what the fuck.