NEW ORLEANS — In your Breakdown: after 12 years under federal oversight, the New Orleans Police Department could be done with its consent decree after a two-year ‘sustainment period.’
The Sustainment period is a two-year ‘probationary period’, per se, during which a department has to prove that progress made under the consent decree will actually stick.
Here’s a brief timeline. Seattle PD was placed under a consent decree in 2012.
By 2017, it had made major reforms. But when the clock started ticking on its two-year sustainment period in 2018, things started to fall apart and fall out of compliance.
It took until 2023 for a judge to agree to dismiss most of Seattle PD’s consent decree measures.
A similar problem happened with the Virgin Island Police Department. It was put under a consent decree in 2009, then lapsed in compliance during its two-year sustainment period beginning in 2018, and it is still being monitored by the Department of Justice.
So, while New Orleans is not Seattle or the Virgin Islands, the oversight is not over, and there’s room for error as NOPD attempts to end its consent decree.
Other cities such as Portland and Baltimore are poised to end their federal oversight soon as well, and Albuquerque PD just started it’s sustainment period journey a few weeks ago.
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