New Orleans Police Department Closing in On Final Phase of Consent Decree

After more than a decade under one of the nation's broadest blueprints for police reform, the New Orleans Police Department is closer than ever to entering the final phase of federal oversight.

U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan will rule Jan. 8 on a joint motion by the NOPD and the Department of Justice to enter a period of less intense monitoring, after years of rectifying department-wide patterns of corruption, brutality and discrimination detailed in a scathing 2011 Department of Justice investigation. If she grants the motion, the NOPD will enter a final, two-year oversight phase — known as a sustainment period — marked by fewer audits and a smaller punch-list of tasks in areas including bias-free policing and community engagement.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, however, said he believes the "court's oppressive oversight" should have ended more than two years ago, when Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration filed a motion to terminate the federal consent decree.

In a comment submitted last month, the governor said the court should "terminate the consent decree in its entirety" and skip the two-year sustainment period. His hand-picked Attorney General, Liz Murrill, agreed.

"There is no ongoing violation of federal law, which means keeping the consent decree in place any longer unduly usurps the state's sovereign prerogative to enforce state law within its borders," Murrill wrote in a Nov. 8 comment that representative Morgan Brungard reiterated at a public hearing Tuesday in Morgan's courtroom.

Murrill also wrote that the consent decree's alleged $132 million annual price tag "funnels millions of taxpayer dollars into private pockets." The judge asked where Murrill got her numbers. Brungard responded that she would furnish those to Morgan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama.

The state's position was part of a chorus that weighed in via email or in-person at Tuesday's three-hour public hearing for or against ramping down federal oversight. it included National Urban League President and former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, who said the consent decree should continue as is. So did Skip Gallagher, a whistleblower whose analysis of public records uncovered widespread timesheet abuse and sparked a federal investigation. Civil rights lawyer Mary Howell pointed to dismal sexual assault clearance rates and "unrealistic" caseloads for detectives as evidence of a department that still "tolerates and enforces under-investigation of violence against women."

A handful of downtown hotel managers and developer Pres Kabacoff, along with the New Orleans Fire Department and New Orleans Emergency Medical Services, wrote that they were in favor of entering the sustainment period.

Multiple representatives of Eye of Surveillance, a community group working to halt local government's expansion of surveillance, said they feel uneasy about ongoing racial disparities, increased forceful actions by police and what they described as a potential ethical violation by a federal monitor who created a private firm, Effective Law Enforcement for All, and hired current and former NOPD officers.

A Bourbon Street palm reader, William Marshall, urged the court to continue the consent decree because of the NOPD's recent French Quarter sweeps, which hurt his business and constituted a "waste of manpower."

Taking a more measured stance was Independent Police Monitor Stella Cziment, who had not previously weighed in on the issue. She asked the judge for a finding of partial compliance or, failing that, an extended sustainment period spanning four years.

"The feedback we received is that the community does not feel confident in NOPD's ability to maintain reforms once federal oversight ends," Cziment said. "NOPD has failed a core component of the consent decree, which is to build community trust."

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