NEW ORLEANS — In a move straight out of the soaring crime rates and deflated NOPD of the mid-1990s, Mayor LaToya Cantrell is bringing in a team of consultants to help right he ship of the NOPD, which is dealing with a 50-year low in manpower amid a spike in violent crime and soaring response times.
According to an email sent to police officers from Superintendent Shaun Ferguson on Wednesday, the NOPD is bringing in two former New York Police chiefs to help turn around the embattled department.
The note from Ferguson states that Fausto Pichardo would act as a “consulting Chief of Operations.”
“Chief Pichardo will begin working with us today (Wednesday) to ascertain exactly where our full-duty cops are and how they might soon be reorganized to achieve the purposes I have set,” Ferguson wrote in the memo.
Pichardo was the second-highest ranked officer in the NYPD and served as the head of the patrol division before he resigned in 2020, according to news accounts.
Ferguson’s email also says that Pichardo is one of two former NYPD division chiefs who recently conducted an assessment of the NOPD. While the other former chief was not named by Ferguson, WWL-TV learned that he is Thomas Conforti, one-time commander of the NYPD Crime Prevention Unit.
WWL-TV also learned that a civilian management consultant, John Linder, will be working closely with the team and has already been in New Orleans laying some of the groundwork for the re-tooling effort.
Linder is a familiar name to some veteran New Orleans officers.
He was one of the architects of the NOPD’s attempts at a bold turnaround in the mid-to-late 1990s under then-Superintendent Richard Pennington. Along with another former NYPD deputy chief, the late Jack Maple, the Linder-Maple team was paid by the New Orleans Police Foundation, which had just been formed by members of the city’s business community at the time.
“It is very reminiscent of how Chief Pennington chose to address the issues the police department faced back then in the '90s,” said Fraternal Order of Police attorney Donovan Livaccari.
Dealing with a soaring crime rate and rampant police corruption, the consulting team helped Pennington craft what was known as the “Pennington Plan,” which was announced to much fanfare at a Gallier Hall affair.
The Pennington Plan included bold promises, including cutting the murder rate in half from its all-time high of 425 killings in 1994. In what may stand as Pennington’s greatest success, he kept that promise within three years, bringing homicides to 158 in 1999.
Another big success under Pennington was bringing the NOPD troop strength from about 1,300 to an all-time high of more than 1,600 officers. That looks like an impossibly heavy lift today, with steady departures and few replacements over the past few years bringing today’s NOPD to a modern-day low of fewer than 950 officers.
Livaccari said that amid the successes of the outside consultants under Pennington and then-mayor Marc Morial, there were also problems. Among them was the lowering of standards for new recruits in the push to quickly hire new officers.
“It had its ups and downs. And so hopefully, this time around, maybe we can avoid some of these potholes we know are out there,” Livaccari said. “I think this will be easier to have good results than bad results. It may not exactly be what we need - a miracle - but it could easily be better than where we are now.”
The NOPD has seen officers leave in droves, losing more than 100 in 2020 alone and dealing with a force that now numbers under 1,000 officers, a total several hundred below what the city would ideally have. Cantrell even hastily postponed a business trip to Singapore as the crisis evolved.
Recent reports cite lagging response times, downgrading of some emergency calls and a short-lived but still concerning statement from Mayor Cantrell that Mardi Gras 2023 could be in jeopardy. That was quickly walked back within 24 hours but 2022’s Mardi Gras saw parade routes shortened, leaving several areas used to neighborhood parades without them.
Ferguson’s email asked officers to deal with Pichardo as “my representative,” but he also stated, unequivocally that “My team will remain my team.”
Here is Supt. Ferguson's full email to his team.
Team:
As many of you know, the Mayor and I visited all Districts, SOD, and Bureau roll calls and listened to police officers from all over the city. She and I concluded that a number of actions need to be taken to support the hardworking men and women of NOPD who come to work every day committed to keeping the people of New Orleans safe.
As you probably have heard, the Mayor has taken action to speed the conclusion of the Consent Decree, while recognizing that it has done some good for our department in its earlier years. It was during this period, for example, that we became the department that other police agencies looked to learn on-street interventions that deliver constitutional policing.
We also asked for a rapid 10-day assessment by two NYPD former chiefs to look at our operations for three purposes. I wanted them to help us 1) improve officer safety--making sure there are enough cops on the street to back each other up and keep each other safe in any situation that confronts them; 2) improve our crime-reduction capabilities; and 3) improve response times for serious crimes, especially crimes in progress. All these things are important to the retention and, ultimately, recruiting.
I have asked Fausto Pichardo, a former NYPD Chief of Patrol, to help us for as long as six months implement their recommendations many of which we had already identified. He will be doing this as a consulting Chief of Operations and will train his permanent replacement during this period.
Let me clarify what will happen during this period of time and what will not. First, my team will remain my team. There may be different roles and responsibilities for some but the mission and vision are the same.
Second, even so, we will look at restructuring and redeploying our department to best serve the purposes of officer safety, crime-fighting, and better service to the residents and visitors of our city.
Third, Chief Pichardo will begin working with us today to ascertain exactly where our full-duty cops are and how they might soon be reorganized to achieve the purposes I have set.
Please cooperate with Chief Pichardo as my representative in these matters during the months that he is here.
And, above all, stay safe and keep each other safe on every watch you work.
Sincerely,
Superintendent Shaun D. Ferguson
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