NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Police Department took a major step Wednesday toward entering the final phase of its 12-year-old federal consent decree.
After a court hearing showing how the department has confronted bias in its policies, training, and policing tactics, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan gave the city the green light to submit a plan to enter a so-called “sustainment period.”
If approved, that sustainment plan would last about two years to show that the NOPD’s reforms are ingrained and sustainable.
“I’m ready to receive the document,” Morgan announced from the bench to a courtroom filled with the NOPD’s command staff. “The department’s hard work has paid off.”
The 12-year-old federal consent decree to reform the NOPD has been in place for two mayors and five police chiefs. Morgan offered praise to current Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick for taking the department near the finish line.
The federal oversight was ordered to remedy decades of problems ranging from brutality and corruption to inadequate training and lax oversight.
Kirkpatrick was in a celebratory mood after the hearing.
“I was excited,” she said. “I was pleased for NOPD. I was really tickled.”
Kirkpatrick credited all the NOPD officers who moved the consent decree forward to this point, using a sports reference to describe her role as “the closer.” She even vowed to second-line down Poydras Street when the department cleared its final hurdle.
“What it says is that the police department has reformed and that we are ready to move on and to show that we can sustain the reforms that have taken 11 years to take place,” Kirkpatrick said. “It is a turnaround.”
One of the last major areas of concern cleared Wednesday dealt specifically with biased policing and WWL Louisiana's story in February revealing that more than 90 percent of gun arrests during Mardi Gras were of African American men.
NOPD Assistant Superintendent Nicholas Gernon said the department was quick to address the TV station’s findings through a systematic review in conjunction with the Department of Justice and consent decree monitors.
“WWL did a review of all our gun arrests and saw that a very high percent of gun arrests were black males,” Gernon said. “The NOPD did not just duck and cover and wait for that to blow over.”
The audit of the arrests presented in court showed that while there was a racial disparity, a review of body camera footage did not turn up evidence of systemic bias.
“When we talk about bias to not only not run from it, to own it, own our history, apologize for our history,” Kirkpatrick said. “The best apology we can give is to become who we are today.”
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