NEW ORLEANS – Recently, a stroller thief was on the loose in the Fontainbleau neighborhood. Rather than call for a police unit to come, a few neighbors used the city's new phone-based crime reporting system.
They called in the complaint by providing a few basic facts, and a police officer called the neighbors back within the hour to complete the full report. It took less than half the time it takes on average to wait for police to show up and take a report for a typical property crime.
This is a prime example of Alternative Police Response, a new strategy from NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison to address slow police response times.
A joint investigation by WWL-TV and The New Orleans Advocate found the average police response on a 911 call is 1 hour and 19 minutes this year, a three-fold increase from just five years ago. Reporters from the station and newspaper analyzed nearly 3 million calls and found the short-staffed police force is taking an average of 2 hours and 11 minutes to respond to non-violent crimes like theft.
Harrison said the most effective way to fix the problem is to add more police to a force that's lost about 400 commissioned officers since Mayor Mitch Landrieu implemented a hiring freeze in 2010. The city has spent $500,000 on an aggressive recruiting campaign, completed three police academy classes and given cops 15-percent pay raises to try to stem the tide of attrition.
But the chief also acknowledges that rebuilding the force will take time, so he's launched several initiatives to better deploy the 1,147 officers at his disposal now.
Harrison hopes a 16-officer task force to patrol crime hot spots will pay dividends, along with reassigning nearly 30 officers from desk duty back to beating the streets.
But critics say the department needs to make more wholesale changes, by letting go of a pro-active, community policing strategy that is promoted as the best crime deterrent but may not be practical with such a small force.
"We have moved to a decentralized model," said Capt. Michael Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans. "And I think we can no longer have that luxury. We have to centralize the detective bureau," instead of having detective units in each district.
Harrison doesn't agree.
"That sometimes works in theory, not always in practice," he said. "Because you lose the effect of the officer in the neighborhood knowing the people in the neighborhood."
New Orleans Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux audited the department's manpower and 911 response and decided the size of the force wasn't the problem. Proper deployment to answering calls for service was.
"We spend a year training these guys and they're standing there in public records, in a uniform with a badge and a gun, doing a clerk's job!" Quatrevaux said, getting a bit agitated. "All right? So I have no sympathy for that."
Early results of Alternative Police Response unit
From the program's launch in August through this Tuesday, the Alternative Police Response unit has handled 864 reports and made nearly 3,000 calls to citizens reporting non-violent crimes, according to NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble. Harrison estimates that saved 864 man-hours so the officers could answer more pressing calls – the equivalent of about 100 shifts for a single officer.
Now, Harrison says the department is building an online reporting system that could be available by the end of 2015, to work in tandem with the phone-based system.
Another time savings may be realized when a new false alarm ordinance goes into effect next year. Under an ordinance passed in June, residents can be fined up to $150 for multiple false alarms in a single calendar year, and Harrison expects that to vastly reduce the number of false alarms and free up the equivalent of six full-time officers for other duties.
Harrison says these strategic initiatives have already led to a downturn in crime. He also said they helped free up officers to respond quickly to a string of armed robberies Wednesday morning in Mid-City, allowing them to catch the suspect in the act of holding up a convenience store and apprehend him without anyone getting hurt, even though he wore a bulletproof vest and was brandishing an AK-47 and a pistol.
But the reforms are clearly still a work in progress.
For instance, Harrison has extended unlimited overtime to officers, but that strategy didn't pay off last year. While some officers took advantage of additional overtime options, those assigned to district patrols rarely did. Harrison said he's concerned about that and has directed his district commanders to dole out overtime strategically to ensure heavier coverage at peak times and in hot spots for crime.
Code 2 emergencies
He also acknowledges that supervisors still need to be trained on how to prioritize emergencies. One of Quatrevaux's big criticisms is that 47 percent of all crimes are designated as Code 2 emergencies by NOPD dispatchers. In other comparable cities, the share of calls that are designated high-priority emergencies is as low as 5 percent, he said.
"If you lump every other call into the 'high-priority' basket, you're obviously going to miss plenty," Quatrevaux said.
Harrison acknowledged that's a problem in an interview with WWL-TV.
"We're looking at that and refining that as we speak," he said.
Police data indicate that domestic violence and sex crime calls are the Code 2 emergencies most likely to take a back seat. Both crimes average about 90 minutes for police to arrive, which is four and a half times longer than the average emergency wait time of 20 minutes.
Part of the problem is that the federal consent decree requires a minimum of two police units on all domestic violence cases.
In addition, Harrison says his supervisors have to prioritize Code 2 calls based on whether a crime is still in progress. But police records are replete with examples of domestic violence calls where the aggressor comes back while the victim is waiting for a police response.
In one 2012 case, police didn't come the first time Darvell Hall called 911 complaining that his ex, Kemoni Pollard, had threatened him, demanded custody of their 11-month-old daughter and smashed his car windshield.
While waiting for the police, an insurance adjuster did respond to Hall's call and was at his house taking his auto damage claim when Pollard came back with her family in tow, broke in the house, stabbed Hall and took the baby, according to the police report.
The police finally arrived 10 minutes after the second encounter, responding to a call from the insurance adjuster who was hiding in a bathroom with Hall's wife and child during the attack.
In another case earlier this month, Simone Watson called police to complain that her ex-husband was stalking her outside her Hollygrove home. It took more than three hours for NOPD to respond, so she had to have her father, the Rev. Tom Watson, come over to protect her.
"If it wasn't for me being available, who knows what would have happened in that three-and-a-half hour window?" he said. "And a domestic incident can escalate to something very, very damaging if it's not dealt with in terms of intervention early."
