Selling the public

Judge Morgan is making noises like she's finally ready to release NOPD from the consent decree. 

The prospect of reduced monitoring, on the way to ending oversight, came into focus this week. U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, who has tracked the reforms since their start, heard a positive report on officer bias, then bluntly requested a plan to launch the NOPD into a two-year "sustainment" phase under the 2012 reform pact known as a consent decree.

"We need to begin putting the framework in place," she said Wednesday.

I don't know enough about their "officer bias" metrics to speak with much authority. Having said that, it's clearly all bullshit that can mean whatever they want it to mean whenever they want it to mean that.  Anyway if NOPD says they're doing a better job, there are reasons to remain skeptical.  

For example, we know the consent decree places limits on high speed chases that pose an unreasonable danger to life and property such as this one that killed two teens in 2019. And yet just this week we saw officers racing through Uptown in pursuit of suspects. And in a separate incident only a few days later, an NOPD officer crashed into a utility pole on St. Charles Avenue knocking out power for approximately 1000 residents. In what way is this progress?

We can look also at the several law enforcement agencies currently operating in New Orleans outside of the federal mandates. This week the 5th Circuit is hearing a case about two private patrol officers who held a teenager at gunpoint after he asked them for help looking for his lost dog. And, of course, many concerns remain about the newly installed State Troop NOLA.

U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, who oversees reforms to the New Orleans Police Department under a consent decree, has expressed concern over the new troop’s role in the city and LSP’s transparency about it, though she has no direct say over how troopers operate within city limits.

Landry insisted Tuesday that officials had consulted with the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI regarding its activities and that troopers in New Orleans have acted “in the most professional manner.”

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been investigating the LSP to assess whether it uses excessive force or engages in racially discriminatory policing in the wake of the 2019 death of Ronald Greene.

All of which leads us to ask: if we have clear examples of police with no oversight behaving badly in New Orleans right now, why would we want to operate NOPD with no restrictions as well? The only answer we can come up with is politics. Morgan is a federal judge and certainly doesn't have to jump whenever the local electeds say jump. But, after a while, even the least credible bullying, like the Governor calling for her impeachment, starts to get the point across. Likely there is additional pressure from all business and political leaders in all corners wanting to get this all wrapped up now that the "Summer of Superbowl" is here.

The way the T-P writes it, you'd think the whole thing is just one big marketing challenge, anyway.

The contrast in tone, tenor and verbiage — optimism in the courtroom among deputy police chiefs, Morgan and the monitors, while community voices drip with skepticism — suggests a challenge in selling the public on the idea that the NOPD is ready to police itself.

"We want Black people to be acknowledged, because it was Black people who were maimed and murdered, who got the consent decree put in place," said Alicia Plummer, vice president of the New Orleans East Business Association.

"Who is speaking for us?...The police and federal monitors, they're in cahoots together."

Is NOPD "ready to police itself?" Not anywhere near as important as, "can we sell the public on the idea?"

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.

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?

"It's going to be perfectly fine"

Depends on how you define "fine," I guess

Facing a staffing shortage at the New Orleans Police Department that last year forced the city to shorten traditional parade routes, the city announced a plan last week to recruit help from outside sheriffs’ offices. 

To that end, the city entered into a cooperative endeavor agreement with the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office to recruit and manage deputies from outside law enforcement agencies to work Mardi Gras details. At a cost of about $1 million, the plan calls for between 100 and 200 deputies from sheriff’s offices across the state to help the NOPD patrol parade routes between Feb. 10 and 21. 

The plan raised questions as to whether these outside agencies would be required to abide by the terms of the NOPD’s federal consent decree, adopted 10 years ago to ensure that the department — which has a well-documented history of abuse and corruption — would police the city in accordance with constitutional standards. 

The consent decree is supposed to apply to agents of the city and the NOPD, though in the past, outside law enforcement agencies — even one that was brought in to police New Orleans under direct contract with the city — have not been subject to the reform agreement. 

And in this case, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson’s office has provided a buffer between the city and the outside agencies being brought in for Mardi Gras. 

At a press conference this week announcing the new strategy, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city and the NOPD would “ensure that everyone is on the same page relative to policy, procedures.”

Woodfork said at the same press conference the arrangement was reviewed by the city Law Department, the mayor’s chief administrative officer and she expected it would also be reviewed by the consent decree monitors.

“I think it’s going to be perfectly fine,” she said.

The above is from a Verite story informing us that Deputy Consent Decree Monitor David Douglass has pretty much signed off on the supplemental police plan for Mardi Gras even though there's no way to ensure that they will follow the practices the decree holds NOPD to. The fact that our supposedly reform minded Sheriff is here as well to act as a "buffer" for them just adds to the irony. 

Anyway, the article goes on to explain that the contract the outside agencies sign makes it explicitly clear that they are not subject to the provisions of the consent decree. It also says the outside agencies are shielded from liability. Furthermore, the article cites a famous example from 2015 when Louisiana State Police attacked and falsely arrested a high school student on Bourbon Street in a case that legally established the consent decree exemptions. 

In their complaint, Dotson’s attorneys contended that the troopers were acting as agents of the NOPD and should be bound by the consent decree. When they tried to submit the consent decree and the NOPD policy manual as exhibits, attorneys for the State Police objected, arguing that the agreement applied solely to the NOPD. 

In a 2018 ruling, Morgan, the same judge who is presiding over the consent decree, agreed. She wrote that the exhibits could not be admitted as evidence because it was immaterial to the case. “The LSP is not a party to the Consent Decree, and the Consent Decree does not apply to the LSP,” Morgan wrote.

There are more examples of such abuses. They happen so frequently, in fact, that one almost begins to question whether there is any point to having a consent decree in effect at all. The mayor says this a lot, actually, but I don't think this is what she means by it. Insofar as she ever is saying anything coherent, she sounds like she'd like to see as many police cracking as many skulls as possible. 

And it seems most city councilmembers would agree with her.  In the most recent episode of JP Morrell's podcast, he and Leslie Harris pine for the return of the so-called TIGER "anti-gang" task forces. Federal monitors ordered those units disbanded in 2020 citing numerous violations including improper searches, failure to use body cameras, and reckless tactics like raids and car chases. There was also a case in which task force officers appeared to fabricate evidence for an arrest.

It should also be said that special units like TIGER deployed to so-called "hot spots" with special permission to terrorize residents are precisely the sort of tactics that bring about incidents like the recent brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by police in Memphis, among many others.

The specialized units have been popping up all over the country, proposed in response to reports of rising violent crime. Some of the anti-crime units have been accused of excessive force; in the killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Kentucky, police in 2020, that force was deadly. In addition, the units, as in the case of SCORPION in Memphis, are expensive to maintain, rekindling a national debate about the funding of police departments.

“The SCORPION unit is what ‘fund the police’ rhetoric looks like in reality,” Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell said in a statement to The Intercept. “Instead of pouring more money into militarized forces that brutalize, terrorize, and even murder, we should fund libraries, after-school programs, good jobs, and other investments proven to keep us safe.”

But never mind that, says, JP. "We need all the help we can get," even if that means pulling together hundreds of unaccountable police from outside of the city and sending as many tactical death squads into our neighborhoods as possible. 

On the other hand, Chief Woodfork thinks it's going to be perfectly fine. And if not, hey maybe the robots will fix it. 

In a move reminiscent of former NOPD Superintendent Richard Pennington's COMSTAT strategy, which in 1996 leveraged computers and data to deploy officers to crime hotspots and helped slash the per capita homicide rate by 50%, Woodfork plans to use cutting-edge technology to strategically deploy officers.

That technology includes drones, license plate readers, the "Neighbors by Ring" surveillance program, real time crime cameras and a new fingerprinting system. The department is also considering robot cops, though Woodruff said the initiative is in the preliminary phases.

What could go wrong?

"Perfection is not the goal"

It's looking like the NOPD is closer to being released from the decade-long federal consent decree intended to clean up systemic abuse and corruption. Leaving aside the question of whether or not any police department that isn't characterized by systemic abuse and corruption can even be called a police department at all, let's just ask the judge how they're doing. 

At Wednesday's hearing, Morgan noted some of the department’s recent troubles, calling the allegations of double-dipping “quite concerning,” and recruiting struggles “troubling.” But she applauded what she described as a dramatic transformation that other police agencies now aim to emulate.

“The NOPD is a far cry from the NOPD of 2013. While not perfect, the NOPD is most definitely a changed department,” said Morgan, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

“Perfection is not the goal of the consent decree. Full and effective compliance is. The NOPD continues to make great strides toward that goal.”

Sooo... there's all kinds of problems. They've been skirting the rules intended to keep them from doing random stop and search.  They've been violating the city ban on facial recognition surveillance software.  They've been found engaging in widespread payroll fraud. You know.. problems.  But "perfection is not the goal" here. Let's be real.  Really you gotta hand it to them for not putting that kind of pressure on themselves. 

Anyway, it seems like the most critical metric, political momentum, is moving away from continuing the consent decree and so it's probably going away soon.  Once it's gone, will anyone notice the difference?  Hard to say. 

A longtime New Orleans police officer was arrested early Wednesday after federal agents and the department’s Public Integrity Bureau searched his home in New Orleans East and found more than 100 guns and a stash of crack cocaine.

Reginald Allen Koeller III, 38, is an 18-year veteran of the force and most recently worked as a patrol officer in the 4th District, police said. He was booked with possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine and the illegal carrying of a weapon while in possession of the drug.

I mean as long as they can keep recruiting young enthusiastic officers with a passion for the field, it should be fine. 

As a junior at McDonogh 35 College Preparatory High School, Koeller joined the NOPD Explorers program, which introduced young people to various facets of law enforcement careers, according to a story published in the Times-Picayune in 2008. He exhibited unusual passion for the field and later sailed through the police academy.

Don't call it a task force

Well certainly this explains everything

The investigative team was created amid the fallout from a June report from the federal monitors overseeing the NOPD’s progress in fulfilling a reform plan. The monitors said that district task forces routinely conducted questionable stops and searches.

Ferguson emphasized that the new “VCAIT” team is not a task force but rather an investigative unit.

Asked about concerns around violent crime, Ferguson said several units announced in the fall are beginning to produce results.

“It is coming to fruition. It may take some time with some of it,” he said. “We hear and we understand the community’s concerns, and that is why we are here today.”

What does the "investigative team" not do that the "task forces" were doing?  Ferguson doesn't say.  This story does say that the Investigative Team includes FBI and State Police among its number. When we learned last week that the city had been lying about NOPD's use of facial recognition technology, it came out that "state and federal partners" were key to enabling that to happen.

The New Orleans Police Department has confirmed that it is utilizing facial recognition for its investigations, despite years of assurances that the city wasn’t employing the technology.

In a statement to The Lens last week, a department spokesperson said that although it didn’t own facial recognition software itself, it was granted access to the technology through “state and federal partners.”

The good news is we learned yesterday from the tweets that City Council had passed a new ordinance that supposedly bans facial recognition and "3 other invasive, racially biased surveillance technologies."  But we see no mention of it in today's T-P/Advocate so we aren't quite up to speed on the details yet. Maybe we'll learn more when we are finished digesting the city's argument for ending the NOPD consent decree.  It appears to hinge on having met the exacting requirements set forth by Jeff Sessions. 

The Cantrell administration’s legal argument leans heavily on a 2018 memo from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which dramatically limited the scope of police consent decrees. Sessions was forced to resign the same day he issued the memo, and it’s unclear whether President-elect Joe Biden’s Justice Department will adopt the same stance.

Not sure what Jeff's standard for rooting out racially biased surveillance is. Sure hope it's a good one. We should note, though, that according to the Lens, NOPD views the new ordinance more as guidance on how to use the technology rather than a ban. 

Jones told The Lens that the NOPD only used facial recognition for “violent cases,” but that “documentation of frequency of use of Facial Recognition is not currently available.” Asked whether there was any written policy or procedure regarding the technology, Jones responded by saying that NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson “is currently working with Councilman [Jason] Williams on a policy as to when facial recognition tools should be used.”

So we'll see how that shakes out. Of course they could always go right back to lying about it. Or it may be that as long as they can keep coming up with new names for doing the same things, that they don't have to. 

Update: Okay here is the story about what City Council passed this week. I think this is the key point.

However, it does let officers use evidence gained by outside individuals or agencies from any of those technologies as long as no one from the Police Department requested or knew that was the source of the information.

Seems like a pretty big loophole easily exploited by a multi agency investigative team, right?

It's no utopia

The federal monitors say Gusman's jail is still not ready to come out of.. uh.. detention.  A few months ago, Gusamn complained that he was being held to an unreasonable "jail utopia" standard. But this seems like the bar he's failing to clear is a good deal lower than that.

Reviews of deaths and near-death attempts like suicide attempts “remain perfunctory and they lack self-critical analysis,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, despite reams of policies and years of concern around suicide attempts, precautions remain lacking. Although the monitors conducted their tour of the jail in late May virtually due to the coronavirus outbreak, they still saw obvious shortfalls.

On one virtual round of the jail’s mental health unit, the monitors spotted an inmate making a rope out of a blanket, and a nursing assistant was chatting with a deputy instead of monitoring inmates on suicide watch.

Maybe next time if they find inmates trying to tunnel out with spoons rather than fashion ropes out of blankets, that will be a sign that morale is up at least. 

Ideally, we wouldn't put anybody in jail at all.  But our political leadership has demonstrated at several points that even during a pandemic, their first priority is "law and order" and punishing people, in general.

This doesn't say anything about the jail budget.  The city has indicated that it believes the jail may be ready to come out from under the consent decree.  And the mayor has even more emphatically called for an end to federal monitoring of NOPD. But in both cases the city's position seems primarily motivated by cost.

Others have argued that it would save a lot of money to de-fund the police and get rid of the jail altogether. But, again, no one in leadership here takes any of that seriously.

So far ahead of the curve we are behind it

Chief Ferguson doesn't know why anybody could possibly be mad at NOPD.  After all, they are "ahead of the curve." 

“We are here to inform our city, our communities, of their New Orleans Police Department’s accomplishments thus far,” Ferguson said. “While there is much work to be done there is much that we should be proud of.”

Ferguson said that on the national level, the NOPD is on the forefront of reform efforts.

“People are calling for a wholesale change of what policing looks like in America,” said Ferguson, “but in New Orleans we are well ahead of the curve when it comes to effective police reform and a commitment to constitutional policing.”

Are they, though? It was a year ago at about this time that we came across  this illuminating article in The Appeal written by Matthew Nesvet. Nesvet recounts his observations working for the auditing firm hired to monitor NOPD's consent decree compliance.  He describes a conspiratorial relationship between the police and the consultants intended to help the cops meet the technical metrics of the decree even if nothing of any substance changes about the way they operate. The consultants themselves are often retired law enforcement. And this kind of consulting can be a lucrative post career option for those who know how to capitalize on relationships.

Police consent decrees are overseen by court-appointed criminal justice experts, including former police chiefs, private attorneys, and academics. These experts audit compliance with reform agreements and advise police on how to make changes. Consent decree monitoring is big business. Teams of expert monitors, often based outside the cities where they oversee police, bid for what can be multimillion-dollar contracts. In New Orleans, where the cost of the consent decree is approximately $55 million and rising, a joint committee of city and federal officials chose a monitoring team led by Jonathan Aronie, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the corporate law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton.

These monitoring teams work with officials like former New Orleans police commissioner Murphy and his boss Harrison to develop metrics that assess the department’s progress. But as Murphy liked to say, quoting a member of the Sheppard Mullin team, “you manage what you measure.” In New Orleans, Murphy and Harrison teamed up with compliance auditors and the Sheppard Mullin experts to focus on quantitative metrics. The compliance “scorecards” Murphy created report the percentage of police districts and units fulfilling audit standards constructed from the terms of the decree.

 But the design of many of the metrics allowed police to check boxes rather than demonstrate real improvement.
consent decree racket

In the long run what happens is the city spends more money on hiring and arming cops, the consultants make a nice stack of money, and nothing else fundamentally changes.  And of course every established politician can pretend they've done some sort of "police reform." It's a win win win.

But, of course, that kind of progress doesn't happen overnight. First we have get everyone on the same page with regard to the fundamentals. For example, we have to make sure they all know how to count to 8. Back to that Lens article for an update on that.

The NOPD and the Mayor’s office have been recently touting the department’s compliance with the national #8CantWait campaign, started by the organization Campaign Zero. That campaign advocates for police departments to adopt eight use of force policies that the organization argues would reduce harm caused by police departments— including a ban on chokeholds, a de-escalation requirement and a duty to intervene when an officer sees a fellow officer using excessive force.

Earlier this month the department claimed in a tweet it had adopted six of those eight protocols — excluding a provision that officers issue a warning before shooting, along with exhausting all alternatives before shooting. Then, days later, Mayor LaToya Cantrell tweeted that the department was in compliance with all eight. At the press conference on Thursday, Ferguson said that in fact the department was in fact in compliance with all eight, and the first tweet was a mistake.

So they're learning some math.  But certain abstractions appear to be beyond their grasp. Such as the concept of zero... as in Campaign Zero.  As much as the mayor and the cops have been talking that up, they still don't quite get it.

Campaign Zero itself acknowledged on the #8CantWait website that the campaign “unintentionally detracted from efforts of fellow organizers invested in paradigmatic shifts that are newly possible in this moment,” and apologized.

Some local organizations seem to agree with the assessment that broader change is needed.

The Orleans Parish Reform Coalition (OPPRC), which held a rally recently to defund the police, has said its demands will broadly reflect a platform called #8toabolition — a response to #8CantWait — which include policy proposals intended to shift resources away from policing and incarceration. The platform calls for defunding and demilitarizing police, removing police from schools, freeing people from prisons and jails, and investing in housing and healthcare.

In other words, despite Ferguson's slightly innumerate boasting, NOPD's reform efforts are still well behind the curve.

The police reform racket

Matthew Nesvet spent a year in New Orleans working as an auditor with the consulting team monitoring the NOPD consent decree.  He shares his experiences and observations in this article.

I watched as police officials and the third-party contractors overseeing court-ordered changes worked together to obstruct real change. I observed how selective metrics, scapegoating low-level officers to deflect blame from high-ranking officials, suppressing unfavorable audit reports, coaching officers scheduled to undergo third-party audits, and ignoring obvious conflicts of interest and wrongdoing by officials allowed misconduct to remain unchecked.

Thanks to Kamala Harris, there's been a lot of discussion this week about neoliberal policies that create vast complicated systems for addressing or working on serious problems but not actually fixing them. The surest path to success in politics, and in most things, really, is to make sure your career agenda aligns with that of existing institutional power.  This is how we end up with so much "reform" that doesn't actually change anything. We address the housing crisis by "incentivizing" luxury development. We combat climate change by trading carbon credits. We provide "access to" health care through a Rube Goldberg nightmare of shifting plans, premiums, and subsidies all meant to protect the profits of insurers above all else.

As it turns out, criminal justice reform is no different.  Why should it be?  According to Nesvet, in fact, it is big business. 

Police consent decrees are overseen by court-appointed criminal justice experts, including former police chiefs, private attorneys, and academics. These experts audit compliance with reform agreements and advise police on how to make changes. Consent decree monitoring is big business. Teams of expert monitors, often based outside the cities where they oversee police, bid for what can be multimillion-dollar contracts. In New Orleans, where the cost of the consent decree is approximately $55 million and rising, a joint committee of city and federal officials chose a monitoring team led by Jonathan Aronie, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the corporate law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. 

These monitoring teams work with officials like former New Orleans police commissioner Murphy and his boss Harrison to develop metrics that assess the department’s progress. But as Murphy liked to say, quoting a member of the Sheppard Mullin team, “you manage what you measure.” In New Orleans, Murphy and Harrison teamed up with compliance auditors and the Sheppard Mullin experts to focus on quantitative metrics. The compliance “scorecards” Murphy created report the percentage of police districts and units fulfilling audit standards constructed from the terms of the decree.

But the design of many of the metrics allowed police to check boxes rather than demonstrate real improvement.

In other words, the name of the game here is grade inflation.  Kind of reminds you of another "reform" racket in the news lately. 

Why don't they want to be on TV?

The city administration is famously gung-ho about putting cameras on every street corner and possibly inside every bar to surviel the populace. New Orleans was even a pioneer in the movement to put a body camera on every cop... ostensibly in order to keep an eye on the police but also on every person the police interact with.  Several prominent local politicians are, this week, publicly lobbying the NFL to extend the purview of its instant replay cameras.. for.. some reason. It is safe to say we are governed by shutterbugs. 

It's weird then that City Hall would resist the notion that they themselves be filmed on the day they receive their official grades from the police monitoring team in charge of determining their level of compliance with the NOPD federal consent decree.  Why would they not want that seen?

The hearing was already being planned before an exchange of letters a month ago laid bare tensions between city leaders and the court-appointed monitors.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell and other city officials said the NOPD considers itself to be in “93 percent compliance” with the consent decree. They asked for a speedy release from the consent decree's strict mandates, and the monitors' $2.1 million per year contract.

The city also objected to carrying the hearing on public-access television.

The monitors wrote back that they were unsure as to how the city came to the 93 percent figure, and that much work still needs to be done. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, who oversees the reform plan, said the public and television crews would be allowed to attend the hearing.

That's weird, right?  Suddenly so shy. We know they're eager to be finished with this whole thing.  The letter they wrote last month had all kinds of complaints.  Mostly, though, it seems like they're tired of having to spend over $2 million a year on the monitors. But they're so close, right?  I mean, look, they didn't even kill anybody for "nearly two years."

By some measures, the department is on its best footing in years. Between January 2017 and January 2019, New Orleans police went nearly two years without fatally shooting someone, which would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. Meanwhile, last year the city logged its lowest homicide count since 1971.

Yet the monitors have warned that the NOPD still needs to prove its supervisors are effectively overseeing their beat cops, and that those ordinary officers follow constitutional practices when they stop and frisk people on the street.

That sounds like the kind of laudable restraint, the city would want broadcasted all over... well.. public access.. but still.  Anyway, if you're looking to tune in, the show starts at 9am and you can just watch on your computer machine. 

What are they there to "assist" with?

The reason the State Police are so valuable (in the mayor's estimation) in policing the French Quarter is they are allowed to get away with more.

But the proceedings opened a window into the disparate rule books governing the State Police and the New Orleans Police Department. The NOPD is subject to a strict federal consent decree that forbids racial profiling and allows officers to make investigatory stops only when they have "reasonable suspicion that a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in the commission of a crime."

The State Police began patrolling the French Quarter on a regular basis in 2014 following a high-profile shooting on Bourbon Street that killed one woman and wounded nine people. Since then, troopers have assisted the NOPD in seizing weapons and drugs and investigated a host of other crimes at a time when the NOPD has struggled to recruit new officers.

"We were never told not to do our job," Edmonson said in a recent deposition. City officials, he added, "clearly knew what we brought to the table" when they requested assistance patrolling the French Quarter. 

There is an expectation right now that the NOPD consent decree may be coming to an end soon. At which time they can go back to doing their own bullying and harassing of citizens without consequence and the State Police "assistance" is likely to end. 

Jeff Landry picked a great day to defend racist policing

Turns out he's super mad that the NOPD consent decree won't let cops sick dogs on people and say the "n" word.

The 129-page decree mandates numerous policy changes, from off-duty details to paperwork filing. It disrespects law enforcement, coddles criminals, and creates wide-open opportunities for suspects to flee. It not only dictates the tone officers must use with criminals, but it also prohibits “inappropriate” and “insensitive” words. It requires officers to get permission from headquarters before they can utilize canines to apprehend violent criminals; only after asking for surrender three times in the criminals’ native tongue, may the canines be deployed. What’s more: when dangerous criminals flee, officers are prohibited from setting up roadblocks, laying spike strips, or using any sort of obstructions.

I blame the "alt-left."

"Substantial compliance"

I'm curious if there is some wiggle room between that term and "full compliance" with the NOPD consent decree. The latter term is supposedly the trigger to begin the exit plan whereas the former is the goal the mayor's office has set for itself while implying that they are basically the same.

The contract extension means the federal consent decree -- a set of court-ordered changes for the police department -- will be in place for at least three more years. Exiting the consent decree requires Morgan to find NOPD in full compliance with mandates in the order, which has not yet happened. Once the judge finds NOPD is fully compliant, a two-year period of "sustained monitoring" must follow.

Landrieu said in a news release Friday his office expects the department to come into "substantial compliance" by the end of his term in 2018. If that happens, and the judge is later satisfied that the department remains in compliance during the two-year "sustained monitoring" period, federal oversight of NOPD will end.

The reason the mayor might be fudging is obvious.  Setting an artificial goal for 2018 allows him to add something to his list of end-of-term accomplishments even if the work isn't actually going to be done for a few more years at least.  Also, it's a thing to say we've gotten done in time for the Tricentennial. Which is good because when Bienville descends from the heavens at that time, perhaps he will judge us just a bit less harshly. 

Ambition makes you look pretty ugly

Louisiana Attorney General... um... Governor... er... US Attorney General Jeff Landry is here to undo the NOPD consent decree.

For Landry, the incident is proof that his agents can make a mark in cases where NOPD officers are hamstrung by what he called a "hug-a-thug" federal consent decree. He said NOPD policy would have prevented officers from embarking on the pursuit. "It places virtual handcuffs on the NOPD," he said of the department's sweeping reform agreement with the U.S. Justice Department. "That is not going to take violent criminals off the street. It has a plethora of problems."

Is he clear on just what the consent decree is supposed to have "hamstrung" NOPD from doing? 

The reforms aim to transform a culture mired in excessive force, unconstitutional searches and seizures and discriminatory policing, according to a copy [pdf] of the decree posted online. The NOPD has long been plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, which resurfaced after the storm.

FRONTLINE has been investigating six cases of questionable post-Katrina police shootings for more than two years with our partners at ProPublica and the Times-Picayune. Federal investigations were opened in all six cases; 10 officers were convicted or pleaded guilty in the shootings of six unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge and ensuing cover-up, and three more were convicted for shooting civilian Henry Glover, burning a car containing his body and covering up the incident. (One of the convictions was overturned and the two remaining officers have filed appeals.) Another officer was convicted for shooting civilian Danny Brumfield outside the convention center where evacuees gathered in the storm’s aftermath.

Maybe these are the thugs he wants to hug. 

Substitute Sheriff

Looks like there's a new sheriff in town. Sort of, anyway.  Gusman picked his court ordered "compliance director" today; i.e. the guy who will supposedly do most of his job for him until the consent decree is lifted.

Gary D. Maynard, 73, essentially will become a surrogate for Sheriff Marlin Gusman, assuming operational control of the Orleans Justice Center as he seeks to implement a series of court-ordered reforms that have languished for three years. He will be known formally as the jail's "independent compliance director."

The sheriff, announcing the appointment at a news conference Thursday, touted Maynard's four decades of corrections experience and called him "a welcome addition to our team."

At no point during the press conference did anyone in attendance mutter the word, "Awwwwkwaarrd" under his or her breath.

For his part, Maynard says he's looking forward to the "big challenge." 

He also is no stranger to controversy, having served at the helm of the Maryland prison system at a time when more than a dozen guards were indicted for misconduct at the notorious Baltimore City Detention Center on racketeering and drug charges.

A federal investigation revealed that a group of corrupt corrections officers aided an inmate gang in smuggling drugs and cellphones into the lockup.

Maynard resigned his position in December 2013 to join the Criminal Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization that provides consultation to prisons and jails.

"I’ve been through some pretty bad situations and some riots and hostage situations," Maynard said. "I’ve always been drawn toward challenges. That’s what drew me down here. I think this is going to be a big challenge."

Eh.. probably not really, though. Sounds more like a dude who has already paid his "challenge" dues and is looking for one more gig from which to draw a pension before he retires all the way.  But who knows? When I'm 73 I'm sure I'll take up base jumping or something.

For Gusman's part, well, as ever it is all about budget leverage. 

Gusman said Thursday that Maynard also will serve as a "conduit to gain access to financial and operational resources that the Sheriff's Office has been denied for years."

Maynard's responsibilities will include crafting a jail budget that Gusman has said must include pay raises for his deputies, long a key point of dispute between the Sheriff's Office and the Landrieu administration in their fight over jail funding.

"Through our collective work," Gusman said, "we will achieve clarity on the budget needed to operate the Orleans Justice Center and meet the other items outlined in the consent decree."

Anyway so welcome Substitute Sheriff Money Conduit, I guess.  Good luck.

What will Gusman do all day?

He says this means he gets to delegate things now. Seems dubious.

At a news conference Tuesday, Gusman insisted that he would remain at the helm, even as he welcomed the addition of a compliance director who will be tasked with implementing a series of jail reforms known as a federal consent decree.

“This is not unlike delegating authority that I do for a lot of the people I work with,” the sheriff said. He added that the compliance budget “must address” deputy pay raises, a flash point in the long-running dispute between City Hall and the Sheriff’s Office.

“This is about us having a direct pipeline to the court. This gives us an opportunity to cut through the challenges, the obstructions, the gamesmanship that’s been going on.”

The settlement makes clear, however, that the compliance director “will be answerable only to the court.”

“The compliance director shall seek advice and/or approval from the sheriff regarding all decisions that materially impact compliance with the consent (decree) unless doing so would cause unreasonable delay, and otherwise regularly inform the sheriff regarding jail operations,” the document says.

The punchline comes next week sometime when we find out the new Compliance Director is actually Ed Blakely. 

How much does inmate care actually cost?

Nobody at City Council has any idea.

The New Orleans City Council expressed deep skepticism Thursday about the $62.6 million Sheriff Marlin Gusman has requested from the city to run Orleans Parish Prison in 2015 — an amount more than double the $28 million allocation recommended by Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

As Gusman watched from the audience of the City Council chamber, leaving an empty seat at the budget presentation table, council members grilled the sheriff’s top deputies about a recently signed contract for inmate health care they assailed as “obscenely” expensive. The five-year deal, awarded to Correct Care Solutions of Nashville, Tennessee, is worth more than $15 million in its first year, a sum city leaders said is hard to stomach.

“Are we doing elective surgery and eyelifts?” Stacy Head, the council president, asked Michael Tidwell, Gusman’s chief corrections deputy. “I expect this is going to be, ultimately, an embarrassing scandal for the city of New Orleans when it’s all said and done — that we are spending this much money for health care when we have as many needs as we do in the city.”

“It’s such a high cost, I question what kind of services (inmates) could possibly be getting to cost this much,” added Head, whose outrage was shared by Councilwoman Susan Guidry. “You could hire a cadre of primary care physicians, a couple of surgeons, a few psychiatrists and keep them on full time, full staff, like the feds do at their prisons, for just a tiny percentage of what this costs.”

The issues are these. 1) Gusman is under a federal consent decree to rectify what have been judged shameful, inhumane, and unconstitutional conditions at the prison.  That's an expensive problem to solve. How expensive is a matter of disagreement between the city and the sheriff. But nobody asking the questions today seems to know exactly how expensive it should be.  2) Gusman has signed a health services contract "behind closed doors" and that makes everyone reasonably suspicious.

Gusman has contended that the medical services contract, which became effective this month, was necessary for his office to have any chance of complying with the medical and mental health care provisions outlined in the federal consent decree he signed with the U.S. Justice Department. City leaders, however, maintain the contract negotiations lacked transparency because Gusman failed to hold public meetings during the selection process.

But if we're going to get to the bottom of this, it can't possibly help matters for Stacy Head to make sarcastic jokes about inmates perhaps being treated to better health care than she imagines they deserve.  Isn't that kind of mean thinking what got us into this mess in the first place?

Stop and deport

NOPD is participating in a federal immigration enforcement program resulting in a policy of de-facto racial profiling.

Late last year, the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice uncovered a pilot program, the Criminal Alien Removal Initiative, reportedly implemented in and around New Orleans by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The program is designed to go after undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records. An official with ICE is quoted in the report as saying “ICE only conducts targeted enforcement. The Criminal Alien Removal Initiative teams go to a pre-selected location, looking for that individual.”

But the immigration advocacy group contends the program has moved well beyond that mission and has become a “stop and frisk” program for immigrants.

The group wrote in a report that “ICE squads are conducting indiscriminate raids at apartment complexes, grocery stores, laundromats, Bible study groups, and parks — often working with local law enforcement — based purely on racial profiling.”

Stories in the report include an allegedly race-based raid of a grocery store on Broad Street, where ICE agents allegedly “kicked a Latino man in the knees until he was bleeding through his pants,” and a traffic stop on Canal Street where an agent allegedly admitted he stopped the subject because he appeared to be Latino.

In August, The New York Times editorial board said the New Orleans program shows how the Department of Homeland Security, working with local law enforcement, “has vastly increased the numbers of low-priority minor offenders and noncriminals it sweeps up.”

More here.

Or we could do just a wee bit less marketing

The city is asking the state legislature to help stave off a budget crunch imposed by costs stemming from the police and prison consent decrees as well as the firefighters' pension fund. To do this they're asking for an increase the police and fire property tax millage,  an increase in the cigarette tax, and, of course, the ever popular hotel/motel tax.

State Rep. Jared Brossett, D-New Orleans, is sponsoring House Bill 1083 that would allow New Orleans voters to decide whether to add another 1.75 percent levy to the the hotel tax. The current rate of hotel taxes is 16.44 percent, said Stephen Perry, president and chief executive officer of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. The new rate of 18.19 percent would give New Orleans the second highest hotel tax rate among top tourism cities, after New York City, he added.

Hotel patrons already saw 1.75 percent added to their bill last year after the hotel industry approved a voluntary surcharge on rooms to pay for tourism marketing, which the Legislature authorized.

Brossett estimated his proposed tax would raise $13 million to $18 million per year for the city. It, too, has yet to get a legislative hearing.

Brossett said the tax presents a good alternative to budget cuts.

The "voluntary marketing surcharge" is already on top of a hotel/motel tax which is dedicated in very large part to entities spend a great deal of their budget on  promoting tourism.   Maybe if we could just take some of that money and rededicate it, we wouldn't have to bump up the taxes quite so much.

The city and the Sherriff's office have come to an agreement

They found about $2 million to put toward implementing consent decree reforms this year.

Not sure how that affects the budgeting process for 2014, though.

The court order, however, specifies that “nothing in this agreement obligates the city to provide specific levels of funding in 2014 and beyond.”

That means the City Council must sort out who must pay, and how much, next year and onward.
“While today marks an important milestone, the hard work is only beginning,” U.S. District Court Judge Lance Africk wrote in his order approving the agreement.

The city must continue to pay the sheriff $22.39 per inmate, per day, as mandated by a decades-old court order.

The mayor presented his proposed budget for 2014 to the City Council last week, but included no funding for the jail consent decree. The administration said it was leaving it up to the council to decide how much the city should pay to implement the reforms.

Looks like they'll be digging under more couch cushions.