
The New Orleans City Council followed through on their plan to freeze portions of two departmental budgets in response to a list of frustrations with Mayor Latoya Cantrell’s administration. The Council and their constituents are fed up with unfinished road projects, broken street lights, clogged catch basins, and permit problems. Meanwhile, police use of facial recognition software has been deferred due to language of the proposal. I’ve spoken to Councilman Joe Giarrusso before on these issues, and I spoke with him again to see where the Council stands since passing the budget freeze.
What are the next steps from the council to ensure communication and transparency from the Cantrell administration?
The next steps are plans to make sure that we don't keep on repeating history, with nothing getting done. The Council funded positions in Safety and Permits to have a dedicated short terminal office, and there just have not been people hired, for years now. The plan is to hire people or move people from other positions, whose sole responsibility is to work on Safety and Permits. I break up the Department of Public Works issues into two separate buckets. There’s things like lights that have been out for years and catch basins that haven’t been cleaned, then there’s joint infrastructure work with FEMA. The repeated theme is the need for a better partnership between the contractors and the city. Obviously, both sides are frustrated with the other. They need to all get in a room and hash out a better plan of action. We need to develop high level action plans where we can start seeing work get done effectively and systematically.
I expected the City Council to defer on facial recognition use. Where do you stand on this issue of police use of facial recognition? It just seems crazy that the NOPD can’t utilize this tool because every law enforcement agency that y'all partner with utilizes facial recognition!
The new language says city officials can use the information from facial recognition so long as such evidence was not generated by NOPD. Some of the other sections on the proposal say nothing shall prohibit any city official from using facial surveillance technology in investigation of a specific violent crime, sex crime, or crime against a juvenile, which makes the term “city official” a very broad word. I don't think what's being proposed is radically different from what the law is right now. Some of the things that are in the bill just need to be more clear because I think the NOPD are the only people we want using it.
We're fighting for our lives. The New Orleans Police need every investigative tool that they can put in their quiver right now and they need to have access to facial recognition software.
I think the most important thing is to figure out how to inspire accountability and who are the right people to use facial recognition.