The recent retirement announcement by New Orleans Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson sets up another likely clash of two parties that have consistently collided during the course of 2022: New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the New Orleans City Council.
Some of the more vocal members of the council have expressed their position that the search for the next police chief should be a nationwide one. Political and police insiders believe Mayor Cantrell wants the next superintendent to be a product of internal promotion. Through voter approved changes to the city charter, the council will have the ability to confirm or deny the mayor’s appointees.
That ability doesn’t take effect until the new year. Superintendent Ferguson’s last day is December 22.
That leaves a small window of time for Cantrell to appoint a new police chief, if she so chooses. For his part, Superintendent Ferguson has said his next replacement should come from within the NOPD.
Throughout 2022, public safety in New Orleans has dominated headlines. With drastic increases in homicides and carjackings from the previous year and an alarming decrease in the NOPD’s manpower, the public and political scrutiny of the mayor’s ability to address those issues has been persistent all year.
Her responses to that scrutiny have made plenty of headlines. As we start to close out 2022, I sat down with political pollster and University of New Orleans political science professor Ed Chervenak to digest this year’s local political stories.
We started with the controversies that surrounded Cantrell this year, then the conversation shifted to the dynamics of the Republican Party in Louisiana and who could be the face of it next year. Listen to my story above.