New Orleans PD Struggles with Out-of-State Recruiting while Seeing Some Staffing Gains

They've come to the New Orleans Police Department mostly from nearby —Chalmette, Gretna, Arabi. And for nearly half of new police hires this year, from within the Crescent City.

Nearly three in four hail from Louisiana, with the remainder arriving to police New Orleans streets from elsewhere in the South. The far-flung exceptions are few: one from Virginia, another from New Jersey. The newest NOPD hires also reflect the city's majority Black demographics, data shows.

Their makeup is a far cry from previous NOPD recruiting efforts, when the department cast a wide national net to fill its ranks — a numbers game that often succeeded, before the pandemic and George Floyd soured hiring for police officers in big cities across the nation.

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These days, applicants to become NOPD officers are fewer, they are mostly local, and the department is managing to convert a larger share of them into New Orleans cops.

The result is a department that has managed to stanch heavy officer losses, while adding a net 25 officers to the force last year. A lack of applicants this year, however, has appeared to dampen Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick's stated goal of making a significant dent in the heavy staffing losses the department experienced over the past three years.

The NOPD lost close to a quarter of its officer strength, about 280 net cops, in three years and remains near historic lows in officer staffing.

A recent recruiting report shows attrition has slowed at NOPD, with the number of officers leaving the force last year around pre-pandemic levels. That mirrors what's happening at police agencies throughout the country, said data analyst Jeff Asher, who created the city's NOPD staffing dashboard and is working with City Council members to evaluate recruiting.

"Most police departments between 2019 and 2022 lost a ton of officers — especially bigger cities — and now, the share of agencies losing officers has started to wane," Asher said. "You still see that negative trend. But it is less negative."

Since last year, the NOPD has hovered at around 900 commissioned officers, with 891 officers and 46 recruits as of June 20. Those 891 officers are the fewest for the department since 1946.

"We are not where I want us to be," Kirkpatrick said bluntly in an April interview, about a month after the launch of the year's first recruit class. "But what we are doing is making lots of adjustments of how do we recruit differently."

Easing headwinds

The 38 new recruits contained within the two NOPD academy classes launched so far in 2024 fall well short of Kirkpatrick's stated goal of adding a couple hundred officers to the force.

The Nola Coalition, a group of business and civil groups, projects the NOPD would need to hire 150 officers per year to increase the force to 1,200 officers over the next six years.

City data shows one reason the department hasn't met that pace: Applications from across the country have sagged.

Last year, the department received just under 3,000 applications, a 13% increase from a bleak 2022 for NOPD hiring. It also hired 105 recruits, helping the department to a net addition last year of 25 officers, according to its latest recruitment report, published in April.

But applications have again fallen off in 2024, by more than half. Most of that decline has come in out-of-state applications, once the bread-and-butter of NOPD recruiting. Louisiana applicants now outnumber out-of-state applicants 3 to 1, according to Asher's data.

The data also shows a significant bump in the NOPD's rate of converting applicants into officers. So far this year, 3.5% of applicants were hired. In 2022, a low for NOPD recruiting, that figure was 1%.

Melanie Talia, president and CEO of the nonprofit New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, said the NOPD needs to examine new marketing strategies to increase the applicant pool. The department has struggled to attract applicants since the foundation bowed out of its role driving the recruiting and advertising effort, and returned those duties to NOPD after 10 years.

But Talia credited the city's launch last year of remote civil service testing and improved officer pay for the higher rates in converting applicants to officers. The city spent $11 million last year on retention bonuses and incentive pay for officers, records show, helping stanch a staffing crisis.

"The ability for applicants to test from where they are has made a tremendous difference," Talia said. "The financial incentive is enticing and helps applicants to remain engaged in (the) process. It does make NOPD more competitive in the market."

Change of guard

For a decade, the foundation drove NOPD applications through a tracking and outreach system and a website, joinnopd.org, that the department now maintains, after a sluggish transfer that affected financial contracts and the pace of applications.

"I think the conversion rate is better now than it was ... because NOPD is smartly using the tools we provided for them over the last decade and that we transferred in July of last year," Talia said.

But the low number of applicants, particularly those from out of state, also appears to have affected the utility of remote testing: 41 applicants had tested remotely this year as of June 6, or about eight per month. Since the option launched in May 2023 after a lengthy delay, 164 applicants have used it, said Amy Trepagnier, personnel director in the Civil Service Department.

Skinning the cat

The department has streamlined the lateral transfer process. Next month, NOPD plans to launch the year's first academy class for lateral transfers, though the size of that class remains uncertain. As of June 6, two lateral officers had been hired, Trepagnier said.

In the meantime, the NOPD has staffed around 50 new positions for civilians, helping relieve officers from administrative work over nonviolent, nonemergency incidents. Those hires have included 21 police intake specialists, 22 investigative specialists and eight investigative supervisors, Trepagnier said.

The strain on the commissioned force also appears to have eased some with a significant reduction in crime, down 26% across all categories as of June 17, according to NOPD data. Murders have dropped 40% compared to the same time last year.

The newest NOPD cadets range from four 22-year-olds who are likely entering policing as a first career, to a 49-year-old recruit, and another with a doctorate.

Though the most recent academy class came in light, beginning with 16 cadets, Kirkpatrick has said a bigger applicant pool and a larger force remain the goals.

"We have seen Kirkpatrick do more with less, like so many police departments," Talia said. "The department seems to be holding its own at around 930 to 950 officers, and she has strategically deployed those resources — and we as a community are better for it."

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