NEW ORLEANS — Fresh off an appellate court victory to delay a scheduled NOPD consent decree hearing, Mayor LaToya Cantrell on Wednesday forcefully repeated her calls for an end to the 11-year court agreement.
“From talking with both police officers who are part of our police department now, those officers who have separated from our department, or law enforcement officers elsewhere that would want to come to New Orleans to serve, this consent decree is an impediment. It is a burden,” Cantrell said at her regular mid-week press briefing.
The simmering dispute over federal oversight of the NOPD reached a boiling point two weeks ago with Cantrell boycotting a community meeting set by U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, who oversees the police department’s reform mandate.
When Morgan changed the meeting to a court-ordered hearing, Cantrell again balked and appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, arguing that Morgan’s agenda did not deal with topics covered in the 2012 consent agreement.
The Fifth Circuit on Tuesday sided with Cantrell, allowing a stay order of the hearing to continue for another 30 days, giving all parties the opportunity to negotiate a way to get the court-ordered hearings back on track.
“Yesterday, it was a step in the right direction, giving and breathing life I would say of objectivity back into this, not subjectivity,” Cantrell said.
So far, Cantrell and the city have been unsuccessful in pushing the consent decree into a wind-down phase. Morgan and court-appointed monitors have stated that while the NOPD remains reasonably close to compliance, some back-sliding over the past year has put the city further away from ending the oversight.
A motion filed by the city last year to end the consent decree was denied by Morgan, and the city’s direct appeals to the U.S. Department of Justice did not move the needle.
So Tuesday’s ruling by the Fifth Circuit, while a minor victory, was nevertheless the first relief that the city has seen in the consent decree battle in some time.
“I want to make sure everyone is in their lane,” Cantrell said. “Have the judge focus on constitutional policing practices and the monitor. But I'm at the point where they've been monitoring for a long time.”
In addition to the normally conservative Fifth Circuit agreeing with Cantrell, so did another official on the opposite end of the political spectrum from the mayor.
Attorney General Jeff Landry wrote in a statement Wednesday, “I am grateful the Fifth Circuit halted this blatant overreach.”
In another twist, four members of the City Council – J.P. Morrell, Helena Moreno, Joe Giarrusso and Lesli Harris – opposed the mayor's boycott, writing to the federal judges that they are even prepared to re-consider “how City funds are allocated if these problems persist.”
Cantrell said her bottom line is that the once-troubled NOPD is substantially reformed and those reforms are entrenched enough to stick.
“We have the tools and the resources in place to ensure that we stay on the right path,” Cantrell said.
Cantrell said she is specifically seeking a clear road map of the remaining obstacles to compliance so the NOPD can enter into a two-year wind-down phase of the agreement, which costs the city about $7 million a year.
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