NEW ORLEANS — Former Henderson, Nev., Police Chief Thedrick Andres has emerged as a surprise favorite to supplant Michelle Woodfork as the next New Orleans police chief.
The city commissioned the International Association of Chiefs of Police for an independent review of 33 candidates for the superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, and the IACP scored Andres first among six semifinalists, according to a report released Monday evening.
Based on the report, Mayor LaToya Cantrell has selected Andres, former Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and NOPD Interim Chief Michelle Woodfork as finalists.
Andres, the former police chief in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas, got an average score of 77% on three key measurements by the IACP – analysis presentation, structured interview and written exercise.
But Andres, a former NOPD officer, has some controversies on his record. He retired from the Henderson Police Department in May after 95% of the police union members voted no confidence in him. KLAS-TV in Las Vegas reported Andres was a finalist in May for the chief job in Victoria, Texas, a small city southeast of San Antonio, but did not get the job.
He also killed a man in 2014 after getting into a fight on a party bus in Dallas, where he moved after Hurricane Katrina. He was cleared in an internal police investigation and a grand jury in Dallas County refused to bring criminal charges. He went to the Henderson Police Department in 2018 and became chief there in 2019.
The IACP also scored Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick at 70.3%, the same as Woodfork, the interim NOPD chief since the departure of Shaun Ferguson in December.
Kirkpatrick was the top police officer in Oakland, Calif., from 2017 to 2020. She was fired by the Oakland Police Commission, but Kirkpatrick filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging she was fired in retaliation for declining to perform favors for commission members.
She’s served as police chief in four cities, including major cities Oakland and Spokane, Wash. She was a finalist to head the Chicago Police Department in 2016.
Coming in fourth was Jarad Phelps, the deputy chief of police in Prince William County, Va., outside Washington, D.C. His average score was a 66.3%.
Last Thursday, Cantrell’s chief administrative officer Gilbert Montaño said the IACP’s evaluation report would be released to the public Monday. City Council Vice President Helena Moreno complained about a lack of transparency, asking July 21 to get the scores from the IACP so the City Council could fully vet the candidates.
“The things that I'm asking for, in my opinion, are very basic things that we need to make an informed decision as to like whether or not we want to confirm whoever the finalist may be,” Moreno said.
The six IACP semifinalists were Andres, Kirkpatrick, Woodfork, Phelps, Philadelphia Chief of Detectives DeShawn Beaufort and former Albuquerque Police Chief of Staff David Franklin.
Cantrell said she considered Franklin a finalist, too, but he dropped out of consideration.
The IACP only released scores for the top four of the six – Kirkpatrick, Andres, Woodfork and Phelps.
There are also two local committees evaluating the candidates.
Councilmember Oliver Thomas says his committee, the so-called external committee, also selected Kirkpatrick, Andres and Woodfork as the final three, but did not rank them. In a note to the mayor, the committee wrote there is a “majority view that Michelle M. Woodfork has demonstrated great potential but does not have adequate experience and would benefit from mentoring.”
The selection process is different than previous selections of new police chiefs. Voters gave the council the power to confirm all top mayoral appointees, including the police chief.
“When the people of this city overwhelmingly voted for this confirmation process, I believe they did so because they wanted us to vet, to make sure that we were really getting the top person for not only this position for but for other top positions within the city administration,” Moreno said.
But Thomas said Moreno and others on the council are getting ahead of themselves. He said the next police chief is still the mayor’s decision to make, with the council approving or disapproving, not participating in the selection process.
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