NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Shaun Ferguson began a Thursday afternoon press briefing that was streamed live to Facebook by asking everyone if they were ready, making sure reporters and photojournalists were standing-by to hear what he had to say, thanking them for coming.
He began his address by telling everyone why this press briefing was being held: to address calls made by protesters to defund and reform the NOPD.
“We’re here to inform our city, our communities of their New Orleans Police Department’s accomplishments thus far,” NOPD’s Superintendent said. “While there’s still much work to be done, there is much that they should be proud of.”
Ferguson called the murder of Geroge Floyd in Minneapolis shocking and disgusting. He acknowledged calls made by many protests across the country and in New Orleans for an end to systematic racism, and said that the New Orleans police department is also calling for that end.
There are also calls for a complete overhaul of police departments and how they are run, the police chief said. But, he wants to inform the people of New Orleans that NOPD had begun making those changes long before protesters began to demand them in response to George Floyd’s death.
“In New Orleans, we’re all ahead of the curve,” Ferguson said. “When it comes to effective police reform and a commitment to constitutional policing, we’ve come a long way since the unfortunate Danziger bridge tragedy. Our people were confronted then for an absolute need for reform and change — a reform that yields results.”
The police chief said the NOPD has delivered the results demanded in the aftermath of the 2005 Danziger Bridge shootings, where NOPD officers six days after Katrina shot and killed 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison, a mentally disabled man. Four other Black civilians were hurt as well. None of the people hurt by police were armed.
“The NOPD has delivered those results in our communities as well as to the millions of visitors to our beautiful city,” Ferguson said. “We are committed to constitutional policing, we are committed to training, and last but definitely not least, we are committed to improving protection for our community and holding ourselves accountable. This is what our community, as well as our country, is asking for, and that is why it is so important that we hold fast to effective police reforms.”
NOPD reforms that have been implemented since 2012 meet demands being made across the country in recent protests, including a ban on chokeholds and strangleholds that has been in NOPD policy since 2015, he said. Officers working for the NOPD are required to deescalate confrontations.
“This is the bedrock of our constitutional policing philosophy and our department’s culture,” Ferguson said. “We have an absolute duty to intervene. That is part of our Ethical Policing Is Courageous training, which makes it the responsibility of every officer to step in and intervene and hold their colleagues accountable.”
The NOPD has banned shooting at moving vehicles and has established guidelines on the use of force that have been in place since 2015, and it is explicitly spelled out, reviewed and, used to hold all officers accountable, the police chief said.
“We require all force to be reported,” he said. “We require a warning before shooting whenever possible, and we also require that we exhaust all other alternatives before use of force.”
Ferguson said NOPD reforms and changes have been made with real progress while keeping New Orleans safe.
“For the last several years, we’ve experienced a reduction in violent crimes in New Orleans,” Ferguson said as he referred to a historic low in homicides in 2019. “The lowest since 1971. The data is clear: Our police force is able to make our city safer while embracing progressive reform and committing wholeheartedly to constitutional policing.”
Ferguson credits NOPD police reforms with establishing and growing relationships with the New Orleans community, allowing peaceful protests, and the de-escalation of occasional confrontations with civilians.
More work needs to be done because NOPD wants to provide a better service to New Orleanians, the police chief told reporters, acknowledging that access to data has been an obstacle as the department works to recover from a cyberattack that struck many of the City of New Orleans’ computer systems in 2019.
But NOPD has recently gained access back to those systems, making them accessible to the public, Furguson said.
As far as demands for defunding police departments, Ferguson said that it would be a big blow to the NOPD because well over 80% of NOPD’s budget is personnel, making any cuts very difficult.
“We’ve already cut overtime. That happened a couple of months ago, and we’re still trying to deal with that,” the chief said. “I just hope that it does not happen.”
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