BATON ROUGE, La. — Attorney General Jeff Landry is joining Mayor LaToya Cantrell in her push for to end NOPD's consent decree.
Landry filed a legal brief supporting a motion to terminate the consent decree. In his brief, Landry argues that the Consent Decree is "a pernicious threat to federalism and that it should be terminated not only because the NOPD has satisfied the Consent Decree but also because applying the Consent Decree prospectively is no longer equitable."
"The 'Full and Effective Compliance' as defined by the Consent Decree has been reached and maintained for more than four years," Landry said. "There is much work to do to restore New Orleans to its former stardom, but ending the Consent Decree would be a tremendous start."
The 2012 consent decree was welcomed by then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu to bring Constitutional policing and large-scale reforms to a troubled NOPD.
Ten years later, current Mayor LaToya Cantrell has said New Orleans police are now the national model for constitutional policing and no longer need federal oversight.
Cantrell said the weight of the consent decree, which she says has also steered the Public Integrity Bureau to uphold disciplinary action that many officers see as onerous and unnecessary, is one of the main reasons officers are leaving the force in record numbers.
“The consent decree handcuffs our officers by making their jobs harder, pestering them with punitive punishment and burying them with paperwork,” Cantrell said.
When U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan will consider the city's motion to end the consent decree is unknown.
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