NEW ORLEANS — Following several violent incidents, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office announced it will release weekly incident reports to keep the public informed on incidents in the Orleans Justice Center.
OPSO says that a report will be published weekly on Fridays detailing non-major incidents that occurred during the week and major incidents will be reported in real-time.
“Since taking office, the Sheriff has been leading the task of upgrading the internal computer reporting systems that generate incident reports. Most of the current systems are inefficient and near or at their “end of life”. While we procure new, state-of-the-art technology, we are implementing a workaround to speed up the process of collecting data and generating incident reports – that will allow our teams to report both major and non-major incidents to the community," Assistant Sheriff Kristen Morales, Information & Technology/Investigations & Internal Affairs said.
The weekly Incident Report will be published each Friday afternoon on the OPSO website: www.opso.us/media.
Sheriff Hutson said in a statement:
“Change takes time – and here at the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, we are working everyday to make the changes I was elected to bring to this organization. The fact is, transparency does not have to be achieved at the expense of accuracy. It would be irresponsible of us to put out unverified information during the initial steps of an investigation; we do not have the luxury of those on social media to simply erase or edit a post. I pledged to be transparent and accountable, and I will continue to do that while ensuring we do thorough investigations and that the information we share is accurate.
This new policy comes a day after The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed that there was another stabbing at the New Orleans jail this week.
The latest stabbing at the jail follows weeks of violence in late July and into early August. Four men were stabbed in separate incidents in eight days between July 28 and August 3.
The stabbings prompted restrictions on one of the high-security pods in the jail. Some inmates in that pod later refused to be put in lockdown and barricaded themselves in a part of the building, blocking access to jail staff. The protest ultimately came to an end after a “joint operation” with the Louisiana Department of Corrections, though Sheriff Susan Hutson’s office did not elaborate on what measures were used. Six inmates were arrested and moved to a Department of Corrections maximum security facility.
The Warden of the Orleans Justice Center, Dr. Astrid Birgden, said today that the residents that held the protest were taken off of lockdown on Friday and were released on the same time schedules as all 24 pods of the Orleans Justice Center.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.