The New Orleans Police Department is free from the federal consent decree that governed it for the last 12 years.
A federal judge ended that decree on Wednesday. While the NOPD may no longer be under that federal order governing how it operates, the man who oversaw the consent decree for the federal government says it's in the NOPD's best interests to operate as if the decree still was in force.
"If I hear another person that NOPD can get back to 'real policing,' I think I'm going to lose it," consent decree monitor Jonathan Aronie said to WWL's Newell Normand. "Constitutional policing is real policing. The New Orleans Police Department has proven that you can fight crime and respect people's rights and respect people at the same time."
Aronie says future leaders in the New Orleans Police Department must continue to abide by the reforms initiated during the consent decree era because backsliding into previous patterns of unconstitutional policing could harm the NOPD's efforts to fight crime in the city.
"We focused on things that were good for everybody, and credibility is a good example," Aronie said. "What officer wants to roll up into a neighborhood and ask people to tell them what they saw if they, the officers, have no credibility?"
Aronie says he's confident that the current NOPD leadership will continue to follow the reforms implemented during the consent decree era. Doing so, he says, means doing what's right, and that, Aronie says, will make the department even stronger.
"I do not buy into the narrative that when a consent decree comes to an end that good policing needs to come to an end," Aronie said. "I'm not worried about New Orleans today with the current leadership and the current structures."
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