Rats gotta eat

First of all we'd like to thank NOPD Chief Anne Kirkpatrick for choosing to drop this Weed Rats meme on us just after Mardi Gras.  It means that everyone who might have had to scramble for ideas a few weeks ago will now have a full year to really sit with the image and decide whether or not it is truly the costume for them. 

Heavy mold and deteriorating elevators, HVAC units and plumbing are some of the issues that have been plaguing New Orleans Police Department headquarters.

But those aren't the only problems at aging police facilities around the criminal justice complex near Tulane Avenue and South Broad Street. Don't forget the vermin, NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told the City Council's Criminal Justice Committee on Monday.

"The rats are eating our marijuana," Kirkpatrick said. "They're all high."

The great thing about the weed rats is everybody immediately loves them. But also nobody actually believes they are a thing. I mean, sure, there are rats at police headquarters. That's easy enough to believe. But, if anything is being stolen from the evidence room there, it's far more likely the culprits are in uniform.*  Even more dubious is Kirkpatrick's claim that the rats are "high." Rats can and do get high. We learn that from this study where rats were observed with increased appetite and laziness after exposure to cannabis vapor.  The key bit, however, is the vapor. Could the rats get high from just eating the raw plants?  I don't think it works like that. 

Anyway, why is this colorful fantasy being brought to our attention now?  Well, you see, NOPD wants a new headquarters. Actually, that's not entirely accurate.  They aren't necessarily asking for a new building. We just know they want to move out of the one they have. 

A plan to relocate New Orleans Police Department headquarters into two floors of a downtown office tower is a large piece of a wider vision to leave behind the city’s crumbling justice complex in Mid-City, said chief administrative officer Gilbert Montaño on Wednesday.

About 400 police department staffers are slated to relocate with the pending move to the 17th and 18th floors of 1615 Poydras Street, called the DXC building, he said. The draft 10-year lease, which awaits City Council approval, calls for a May 1 move-in date.

The plan is to abandon the current HQ located in the (geographic) center of the city with its proximity to the criminal courthouse and central lockup and move, instead, into an office tower downtown with limited public access and practically no parking. Oh and also now the city doesn't control the building and is paying rent to a private landlord for at least 10 years. This is short sighted, minor league city type stuff. The police aren't even "allowed" to do police business in the police office. 

Lahasky said the lease will not allow NOPD to conduct interrogations or make arrests within the office building.

“Our agreement with NOPD is that the offices will be utilized as administrative offices, and that certain uses such as interrogations and lineups and things that outsiders perceive as maybe not the kind of uses you’d like to see in an office building” won't be allowed, he said. “Those particular uses are to be held off-site.”

Nothing about this makes any sense in terms of public service.  It does make sense if you come at it from the point of view that the city government exists solely to facilitate real estate deals that benefit the succession plans of fading oligarchs like Frank Stewart.  Which is precisely the sort of thing you might think if you are Gilbert Montaño. 

Negotiations began in earnest about six months ago, Montaño said, when the building was still owned by businessman and philanthropist Frank Stewart. The Monroe businessmen who bought it at the end of last year, brothers Eddie and Joseph Hakim, also own Orleans Tower, the former Amoco Building a few blocks away. The city leases space in that building for the Department of Safety and Permits, Civil District Court clerk and Civil Service Commission, among others. 

Frank Stewart, for those who need a refresher, is a billionaire investor whose fortune derives from his family's funeral home business.  The "philanthropist" descriptor he gets in articles like the one above is an inevitable result of owning lots of things (downtown office towers, for example) and making use of as many tax write-offs as possible.  In recent years, his "charity" work garnering the most attention was his leadership of the Monumental Task Force's attempts to maintain the city's Confederate statues. In 2017, he took out a full page ad in the newspaper denouncing Mitch Landrieu's efforts to have them removed.  Mitch was on his way out of office and working on his national profile at the time.  Because of this, he could afford to ignore Stewart's provincial concerns.  The same could not be said for Stewart's ambitious local ally in the monumental "lost cause," Councilwoman and soon to be Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

On Dec. 17, 2015, the day the City Council voted to remove the monuments, Cantrell, then a council member, gave a speech that must have been music to the ears of the pro-monument crowd, chastising then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu for bringing the issue to light. Amazingly, within the same hour she joined the majority of the council in voting for removal.

In early 2018, within a few months of being elected mayor, Cantrell empowered a secretive working group of Confederate monument supporters to decide the future location of the warehoused monuments. One of her spokesmen stated, “She believes that the future of the former monuments belongs in the hands of those who care about them.”

It’s highly likely that the only reason the mayor didn’t go through with the group’s relocation plan, moving them to another prominent location, was the exposure she received in an article by Kevin Litten published in The Times-Picayune. The article exposed Cantrell’s willingness to placate the side of the argument endorsed by some of the most moneyed and powerful people in the city — the side she voted against as a City Council member.

None of that was surprising. Both mayors (and a number of other state and local politicians) have done plenty of favors for Stewart over the years. In 2017, the same year the monuments controversy came to a head, they all helped swing the deal that gave Stewart's building its "DXC" moniker. That $120 million deal committed the city and the state to a package of subsidies and incentives including an agreement to rebate the payroll of software company DXC in exchange for its promise to occupy ten floors of Stewart's tower. The company and the politicians promised as many as 2,000 new "tech" jobs.

Of course, there were those of us who, just days after the announcement, observed that DXC appeared to be taking advantage of the state's generous corporate welfare offerings in order to facilitate its own global downsizing and outsourcing scheme to cut jobs and wages. But nobody ever listens to those of us who say such things. Anyway as time went on, it became clear that DXC was never committed to hiring locally. Over the following years, they would repeatedly miss the goals set forth in the original agreement. As of 2022, they had nearly scuttled the entire thing and were looking to sub-lease much of their office space in the tower.

In the meantime, The Cantrell Administration has spent plenty of time and energy trying to figure out ways to plug the hole in Stewart's revenue stream.  At one point they even considered moving City Hall into the building.  Which brings us up to last year when we find an aging Stewart trying to liquidate his asset portfolio in a slow market for downtown office space. At the time of the sale, the building was roughly 50 percent vacant. But its buyers, Eddie and Joseph Hakim were strangely bullish on its prospects. Likely the, by then, well underway negotiations over a guaranteed NOPD tenant had something to do with that.

All of this is typical New Orleans cronyism. But it also reflects the conservative ideology at the heart of the Cantrell administration. Gilbert Montano said recently that "the future" of city government should rely more on regressive user fee-based budgeting rather than a reliable tax base for dependable services. Under that kind of regime, there can be no real investment in social or physical infrastructure. City services will exist under continual threat of cuts. City departments won't own their own buildings.  Not even the police.  The only dependable revenue streams created go the other direction. Out of the public coffers and into the hands of corporate landlords.

For his part, (potential mayoral candidate) Oliver Thomas wants to put a pause on the NOPD lease because he doesn't feel adequately communicated toward.

“Not only was there a lack of communication about this viable move, but it seems like there was not a lot of thought put into multiple locations that would provide the best access to the men and women that utilize the headquarters, as well as the citizens to whom access is extremely important,” Councilmember Thomas said in his letter to Montano and Chief Kirkpatrick.

Thomas wants to “take a step back” to review other possible locations for the new NOPD headquarters.

He says he’d like to see the new NOPD headquarters be in a location that is more “community-oriented” with easier parking and that could become a more permanent spot that would add “value to the community.” He also says he’d like to see the new NOPD headquarters be in a location that would add overall access to residents in the city.

The kids are already joking that maybe Thomas will suggest putting the new HQ at the Six Flags site his friend Troy Henry is supposed to be redeveloping. But it occurs to us that this would put us a step closer to the New Orleans Cop City we've already speculated that Mayor OT might build one day. So maybe it's not that funny. In any case, it wouldn't represent a change in governing philosophy so much as a slight adjustment in the direction of the spoils.  It's never really a question of whether the rats are going to get a piece of the stash so much as it is which rats in particular.

 *That link references an evidence room scandal from 15 years ago.  When I started writing this post, I hadn't yet seen the latest one out just today.  Interesting that after the weed rats got their fifteen minutes of fame, NOPD has moved right along to blaming the conveniently deceased for what is clearly a systemic issue.

Does anybody remember Friedman units?

That thing where you definitely expect conditions to improve "within the next 6 months" or so and then keep pushing that ahead as needed.  Anyway, we might have one of those with the NOPD consent decree now. 

The mood in Morgan's courtroom was relatively convivial Wednesday afternoon at the first public hearing in more than a year on progress with the federal consent decree, and the first for NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick as the city's top cop.

It was a stark contrast to the last series of hearings, where Morgan found the department violated 10 provisions of the consent decree in its internal investigation of Officer Jeffrey Vappie and his work for the mayor. Morgan ultimately declined to hold the city in contempt and accepted a remedial action plan. 

Fulfillment of the plan's 95 actions is among the steps necessary for the department to reach compliance with the consent decree and enter a period of stepped-down monitoring. Of those 95 items, a little under half are done. 

"Our estimated time of completion is June 2024," said Deputy Chief Nicholas Gernon, who along with Kirkpatrick crafted that plan.

We'll check back then, I guess.

Also, here's a somewhat related aside.  On Mardi Gras morning, I got out to take my customary photos of high ranking New Orleans officials leading the Zulu parade on horseback.  Traditionally the mayor does this. But in recent years our current mayor's appearance there has been sporadic. Sometimes there's a councilmember instead. Sometimes it's the Sheriff.  And sometimes, like this year, it's just the police chief. 

Significant in this case, because it is the new Chief, Anne Kirkpatrick. It seemed like a big day for her. Later that night I watched her get interviewed by Errol and Peggy at the Rex ball. This isn't an exact quote below but it does capture the essence. 

 

THEY PUT ME ON A HORSE. I LOVE THE LITTLE HORSE. pic.twitter.com/5xUmStXfyN

— skooks (@skooks) February 14, 2024

Basically, she sounded like this whole gig is just a big fun cruise she's booked. Which might not be too far from the truth but we'll get back to that. 

Anyway, walking about 20 feet ahead of her was former interim Chief (and runner-up to Kirpatrick for the job) Michelle Woodfork.  We all noticed because a woman ran out of the crowd to greet her shouting, "That's MY chief! That's my chief right there!"  

And maybe she's got the right idea. Since we're in a world now where there are multiple police forces reporting to multiple District Attorneys applying multiple standards of justice and policing according to political whim, maybe we should all just pick whatever chief we prefer.

I believe this was a hearing about establishing law and order

I hear there were a  lot of fun public comments but I still was hoping I wouldn't have to watch the recording of this one. Unfortunately, now I may have to.  

A New Orleans City Council committee on Wednesday voted to move the nomination of Mayor LaToya Cantrell's nominee for police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick, to a full council vote, although the 4-1 vote was not technically an endorsement.

Kirkpatrick, a West Coast transplant and veteran police chief, seemed to garner support from committee members in a first-of-its-kind confirmation hearing. Council President JP Morrell's motion for "no recommendation" was something of a compromise after hours of virulent opposition from public speakers and a shouting match between Morrell and Council member Oliver Thomas.

Thomas said he had been leaning against voting to confirm but was open to changing his mind. He took offense when, in his view, council members seemed to presuppose a vote in favor of Kirkpatrick. Morrell and Thomas traded accusations of being out of order, and Thomas suggested they settle the argument outside before tensions cooled.

Imagine challenging someone to a duel right in front of the police chief. 

Anyway, it looks like the hearing and the public comment covered a lot of ground. The article doesn't catalog everything that might have been brought up. It does mention a little bit about Kirkpatrick's experience in Oakland although it isn't clear if that was addressed. 

In Oakland, Kirkpatrick took heat for what critics have called a lack of progress on that city’s court-enforced police reforms, and for her handling of discipline for officers involved in the killing of a homeless man, among other controversies. She was fired by a newly formed police commission. A licensed attorney, Kirkpatrick later won a $1.5 million settlement for wrongful termination after a jury ruled in her favor.

There's a little more to that story. I wrote a little about it a few weeks ago.  It seems to me like the candidate's actual record ought to have at least as much scrutiny as her promises to learn about "local culture" and so forth. But, honestly, this all seems like a formality at this point.

Who appoint-a da chief?

On Friday, Mayor Cantrell (apparently back from France) swore in the person she expects to become the next  "permanent" (at least until the next mayor takes over, anyway) Police Chief. It's Anne Kirkpatrick. As the only of the three finalists who wasn't either a guy who killed a man on a party bus or a politically un-viable interim appointee, she's the perfect fit.

If confirmed by a council majority, Kirkpatrick will make history in other ways. She would become the first female to become NOPD superintendent, coming after Woodfork opened the door as the first female interim chief.

Woodfork, who was one of the three finalists for the job along with Kirkpatrick and Thedrick Andres Sr., was appointed in December to succeed ex-chief Shaun Ferguson when he abruptly retired.

Kirkpatrick, a 35-year police veteran with 20 years in leadership position, last served as police chief in Oakland, Calif. Like Oakland, the NOPD has been laboring under a sweeping federal consent decree to foster Constitutional policing and usher in sound training and leadership.

A few notes here regarding Kirkpatrick's prior experience. There are issues one would hope City Council will address during the confirmation hearings. But the tendency with professional job-hoppers is they are granted a clean slate in each successive city they skip away to. There's always another sucker somewhere. Our city appears ready and willing to become the next.

Anyway, a NOLA.com article raised a bit of this a few weeks ago. One incident highlighted there was Kirkpatrick's role in covering for the cops who rolled a whole SWAT unit up on a homeless man named Joshua Pawlik. They found him sleeping in a park and murdered him.

Kirkpatrick endured intense criticism over her handling of discipline after five officers were involved in the 2018 shooting of a homeless man they’d awoken. The federal monitor over Oakland police wanted much heavier discipline than Kirkpatrick was willing to impose, calling her analysis “disappointing and myopic,” according to reporting by the East Bay Times.

Ali Winston, a journalist who co-authored a recent book on the Riders scandal and policing in Oakland, said Kirkpatrick was brought in to help “break up a frathouse atmosphere” but caved to the rank-and-file.

“She claimed to reverse culture in the department but basically rolled back serious discipline on a number of officers and didn’t follow through with a mandate to ensure consistency of discipline, that all cases are investigated thoroughly,” Winston said.

John Burris, a civil rights attorney involved in the Oakland police reform case, agreed that Kirkpatrick went light on the officers in the case.

“She really made an effort to cover it up,” he said. “She went out of her way to shade things and interpret them in a way that was designed to protect the officers.”

I decided to check out Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham's book this article mentions.  In addition to her mishandling of the Pawlik investigation, it finds several other points of criticism to consider. Here is a quick summary. 

1) At the beginning of the Trump Administration, Kirkpatrick violated the city of Oakland's promise to protect immigrants and instead cooperated with ICE to conduct deportation raids. 

In 2017 Kirkpatrick put her foot on this third rail by ordering several officers to close off a West Oakland street to help ICE agents raid a family's home and arrest two men. The OPD issued a statement afterward claiming ICE was pursuing suspects who were "sex trafficking juveniles." Kirkpatrick said later that her department hadn't violated Oakland's sanctuary policies because the officers were assisting in a criminal "human trafficking" case, and she claimed one person had been charged with a "crime."

In truth, the case had nothing to do with underage sex trafficking, and no one had been charged with a crime. Instead, one of the detained men was charged with a civil violation for being unlawfully present in the United States. He was sent before an immigration judge for possible deportation.

2) The Oakland Black Officers Association alleged that Kirkpatrick discriminated against Black officers and recruits in various ways saying her conduct "hurts our members and the public at large"

3) Under Kirkpatrick, the Oakland Police showed signs of backsliding out of compliance with the dictates of its federal consent decree. Most critically there were problems with use of force violations as well as failures to complete investigations within an appropriate time frame. 

Thus far, the press in New Orleans has shaded Kirkpatrick's "experience" working under a consent decree as a positive. The conventional line seems to be, she is well placed to finally complete the task of getting NOPD into full compliance. But that isn't what her record actually tells us. Rather than work to comply with the consent decree in Oakland, Kirkpatrick worked with outside consultants and PR pros to launch political attacks against the court appointed monitor and call the whole process into question. 

(Judge William) Orrick knew that behind the scenes, Kirkpatrick and other city officials, not just within the police department, were already criticizing (the federal monitor Robert) Warshaw, laying the narrative that it was the monitor's subjective judgments that were the cause of the recent problems, not the OPD's actual misdeeds. More pointedly, current and former officers were lining up to criticize Warshaw, claiming that his views on the OPD's backsliding were influenced by the hefty paychecks he collected from the city. Clashes with city officials and Department of Justice attorneys in Detroit, where Warshaw also served as court monitor over that city's police reforms, were cited as supporting evidence, and even and ex-NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton took shots via Twitter at Judge Orrick and Warshaw over the latter's alleged profiteering. 

Orrick made it clear he would have none of this in his courtoom: across sixteen years, the monitoring team exposed egregious scandals and reined in the OPD at crucial junctures, and it was trying to do this again. "I have complete faith in them and their ability, and they are the eyes and the ears of the court," he said of Warshaw's team.

Kirkpatrick's arguments before the judge in these hearings, though delivered with plenty of "we are doing progressive reforms here" type language, were little more than arrogant cynicism concerned primarily with political "narrative."  This, in Winston and Bondgraham's telling, is the moment where her insincerity became most clear. 

"So, your honor, the OPD is on the move," she said. "We are progressive. We are not regressive."

It was a presentation Orrick could appreciate, balancing the clear and obvious failures during the chief's twenty months on the job with some good work. But Orrick wanted a little more soul-searching from the police commander. "Before you go, Chief, what do you think is your biggest challenge?" he asked.

Kirkpatrick thought about it for a moment and answered: "the narrative."

An astonished look came over the judge's face for a split second before Orrick frowned and asked her if she meant to say communication. 

"No sir. The narrative that we are not moving forward," explained Kirkpatrick. 

"That's what you think your biggest challenge is?"

"I think that's a challenge," the chief replied. "I think there are other -- I think that's the challenge. I think that we do indeed have culture shift. I think that we have failed in explaining the proofs."

It was for these reasons that a citizen-led police oversight commission (no we don't have one of those in New Orleans) decided to fire Kirkpatrick.  Afterward, she remained defiant. Kirkpatrick held a political rally with the police union and their political allies denouncing the consent decree. She also filed a lawsuit against the monitor.  

While that T-P article cited above does acknowledge Kirkpatrick's politically framed attacks on federal police monitoring seem to be on the same wavelength as Cantrell's bucking of the NOPD consent decree, it also shrugs the notion off.  One would hope that City Council, proud as they are of flexing their muscles over appointment powers lately, might take a more critical view.  But something tells me they won't. We'll find out next week.

In the meantime, how about a movie?  That's right, Catch Basin Cinema is back. And in honor of the resolution of the city's police chief search, we watched a movie about another infamous episode in NOPD Chiefing history. It's 1999's VENDETTA, and it's a TV movie about the 1891 lynching of Italian Americans in New Orleans following the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy. The movie stars Christopher Walken as sort of the Michael Hecht of his day, leading a Gilded Age NOLA Coalition to control the police department and keep working class communities in line for the benefit of business elites. Intrigue and mayhem ensue.  But what else is new around here, right?