NEW ORLEANS — The recordings of Officer Jeffrey Vappie being questioned by an NOPD investigator should not have been released to the public, but now that they has been, the leak has raised concerns across the city.
According to a joint statement released by the City Attorney and the Public Integrity Bureau, or PIB, the audio was “inadvertently released by the Law Department to a HANO board member,” because of an effort by the City Council to “exchange records in advance of a special meeting.”
HANO says otherwise. In a statement to WWLTV, HANO said “the HANO board was not the requestor nor indicated any need of the recordings.”
Attorney for the Police Association of New Orleans, Eric Hessler, says the leak should’ve never happened.
“It’s a mess. That’s why it’s supposed to be kept secret, it’s supposed to be kept confidential to avoid all these problems,” Hessler says. “When you’re handling sensitive information like that and your handling witnesses and the witnesses ability to remain anonymous, that can jeopardize the remaining investigation and things that other witnesses may or may not say or may not make themselves available.”
Some are calling for a third party to step in and take over the investigation, which Hessler says PANO has called for since the beginning.
“PANO has said it from the beginning, a third party, independent investigator should have had this manner assigned to them, an outside agency," he said. "There’s simply no way that the NOPD should’ve been allowed to conduct this investigation and now that we have such an incident like this happen, you almost have to ask yourself why is anyone surprised that we’re in this position that we’re in now.”
Hessler says an investigation needs to be done, not only on how this was exposed but into all PIB’s investigations and their tactics.
The Law Department says they have taken steps to address the mishap.
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