There’s an enormous amount to unpack in this saga of Cantrell's thwarting the NOPD promotions. It stretches back well into last year. But every back alley you go down, every stone you overturn confirms what we already know: Mayor Cantrell doesn’t give the smallest of damns about New Orleans taxpayers or the folks who work for her.
Here’s what happened. Recently, the Civil Service Commission’s investigation confirmed that for months, Mayor Cantrell illegally interfered and blocked the superintendent from issuing promotions from the September 23, 2024, NOPD Composite Scored Promotional List.
After painful delays, the commission subpoenaed the mayor to testify at a hearing on March 14, 2025.
As you might remember, during the hearing, she repeatedly asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. That was her response to basically every question posed to her by the petitioners and the commission.
The mayor refused to testify whether she received any complaints about the promotion process delays. She refused to answer what those complaints were. She refused to answer what she had told the superintendent about the complaints. She refused to answer which NOPD officers were adversely or beneficially impacted. She refused to answer whether she prohibited Kirkpatrick from making any promotions from the list, and whether that instruction to halt promotions was politically motivated.
Nothing. She was as silent as a graveyard.
After this, the petitioners motioned that an adverse inference be entered against the mayor. The commission took the motion under advisement and allowed each party an opportunity to brief the issues.
For clarity, an adverse inference is a term that only applies to civil cases. Basically, it states that the blatant use of the Fifth Amendment can actually be used as proof of guilt. In this case, the commission seemed confident enough that Cantrell’s silence was so egregious that, upon looking into it, they could prove that she was using that to cover up illegal activity.
The commission ultimately entered an adverse inference against Cantrell. And it had a caveat that they also expected to hear testimonies to try and validate this adverse inference from other witnesses.
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A couple of days back, the report from the Civil Service Commission came back: Cantrell improperly involved herself in the promotional process.
The mayor’s motive to halt promotions tied to Lieutenant Sabrina Richardson
All of this starts with the mayor’s attempt to assert her power over police promotions.
The promotion process for the NOPD takes two things into account: Civil service test scores and a review of disciplinary proceedings. To remove bias, there’s essentially a matrix that determines if you get a promotion or not.
Promotions were supposed to occur back in September 2024. But the mayor was solely worried about one person, Lieutenant Sabrina Richardson. Richardson had been in charge of the Public Integrity Bureau, whose sole responsibility was to investigate other officers for violating the Louisiana Constitution and the policies and procedures of the NOPD.
But there’s one detail that’s fairly important: Richardson herself had been the subject of an investigation that found she was double-dipping.
While on the payroll, she was found to be working and profiting from extra details at the same time. There was an investigation that proved she would often say she was in one place, but be in an entirely different part of the city, collecting money from those details. By definition, that’s fraud.
She was ultimately demoted. But they allowed her to sit for the captain's test again. How anyone thought to put this person on the stand is beyond me. She perpetrated a fraud, but for whatever reason, that was no big deal at the NOPD. You can commit a theft, fraud, or get demoted. Life goes on. And shortly thereafter, you're eligible to sit for the captain's exam.
Richardson claimed her demotion was gender-based bias, but that claim was thrown out of court.
Then the promotion time came. Richardson had one of the highest test scores on the civil service exam, if not he highest. But when her disciplinary record was examined, she dropped in ranking. That’s how the system works, that’s what it's there for.
That’s when the mayor set out to change the ranking process. She started campaigning to have the disciplinary portion thrown out and just go off the civil service test score, which would’ve cemented Richardson’s promotion.
To do this, she tried to rope in Anne Kirkpatrick to see what ultimately could happen and have this go away. They went back and forth. There were calls, emails, and ultimately a delay of all promotions as they tried to figure this out.
During this process, Cantrell found out that the test results were only good for a year. And if they were able to push it off until July 2025, the disciplinary test results wouldn't factor in.
Cantrell's manipulation could get her removed from office
The Mayor’s delay of the process was a deliberate concoction to suppress other qualified candidates for the sake of her own bias and personal favor. She tried to upend the system that had been put in place during the consent decree in order to have a fairer and just system, one that is built to weed out crooked and prejudiced behavior.
In trying to airbrush Richardson’s fraud, Cantrell committed fraud herself.
She tried to erase the disciplinary history and manipulate the system. Then, after being found out, she hid behind the Fifth Amendment and also appealed this action to an appellate court to prevent them from even looking into this matter. Thankfully, members of the Civil Service Commission did not succumb to the pressure.
And here we are. A mayor who would rather spend her final days in office violating the constitution instead of fixing a pothole. Our education system is failing, NORD is falling apart at the seams, and Cantrell is more preoccupied with tinkering and dismantling the system she swore to uphold.
She trampled over the rank and file NOPD, suspending many hard-earned pay raises, all to benefit a friend who had already been demoted. The fact that anybody within this organization would be willing to work with this woman is beyond me.
We wonder why we’re struggling to recruit officers. We wonder why people are fleeing the city at a rate faster than any other metro area in the country.
We've become a city run by fraudsters who put fellow fraudsters ahead of their constituents.
So I'll say it again, this next election matters. Do your research. Take it seriously. Ask questions. Because we can’t afford to elect another crook.
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