Why did the New Orleans city attorney have access to materials pertaining to the NOPD's investigation into Officer Jeffery Vappie, and why did her office release those materials as part of a public records request?
Those are the questions members of the city council want answered.
The NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau is looking into whether Vappie committed payroll fraud and into allegations that he had an affair with Mayor LaToya Cantrell. The leak of audio from that investigation is raising new concerns that the PIB can't handle the job.
In fact, Councilman Joe Giarrusso says hiring an outside investigator is a no-brainer.
"What kind of confidence does this give anybody who's involved in the investigation that it remains confidential?" Giarrusso asked WWL's Dave Cohen.
Giarrusso says the leak is the just the latest problem to plague the investigation. He also points to what he calls inherent conflicts of interest in that investigation. According to Giarrusso, those conflicts include Vappie's relationship with Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who oversees the NOPD and the city attorney.
"You don't want to say anything bad has happened because that might not be the case, but you definitely have a person who will be part of this investigation or who will have a role in it who sits at the very seat of control of what's going on," Giarrusso said. "And then, secondly, as I somebody pointed out yesterday, what kind of confidence does this give anybody who's involved in the investigation that it remains confidential?"
Giarrusso says that lack of confidentiality could harm this and other PIB investigations.
"You're going to prevent people from coming forward," Giarrusso said. "It's going to have a chilling effect if you know I give a statement that's supposed to be confidential and that it can become public."
Giarrusso says none of the materials leaked on Wednesday should have been released until the case against Vappie was completed. He also said there's no reason why the city attorney's office should have been in possession of investigative materials. According to Giarrusso, the leak is just the latest example of why the city should hire an outside investigator to handle the Vappie case.
"It just became very clear months ago that the easiest way to deal with this is to have a third-party take over the investigation," Giarrusso said. "You don't get into the middle of all these problems. I hate the fact that all of these things that seemed easily foreseeable and predictable have come to pass now."
Can and will the city council mandate that the NOPD hire an outside investigator to handle the Vappie case?
"I don't know how we can mandate that happening. I suppose that we possibly could," Giarrusso said. "I think what we want right now is to be deliberate and see how this leak happened and why it happened, and my guess is, pivoting off of that, (we'd) make a determination of trying to see how we can shift this. The other thing, too, is: now if we put this completely in the hands of a third party after months of investigation, it slows down the investigatory process all over again."
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