Over the past three weeks, I’ve spoken with, visited and interviewed ten people who either have worked for the New Orleans Police Department or are currently working on the force. I had one goal: Find out why officers are leaving the already short-handed department. It’s a simple premise, but the responses I received are complex and very personal.
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The NOPD is at a 70-year low for manpower. Some projections put staffing below one thousand, which criminologists and crime watchdog organizations say is dangerously low. The number of actual officers on the street has been debated by the NOPD’s leadership and by Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration, but there’s not much arguing the fact that the force is severely lacking an adequate number of officers to respond to calls for service with wait times now averaging 2.5 hours.
The Cantrell administration last week addressed what it described as a crisis at the New Orleans Police Department. The mayor announced some policy changes and efforts to retain the officers still serving with the NOPD. We’ll take up those initiatives in a following story, but first I want to focus on what some former and current officers told me. I believe it’s important to hear from the men and women who are responsible for the city’s safety, especially as the number of homicides, shootings and carjackings have seen significant increases over the past two years.
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It's a reasonable expectation that what officers told Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson about the ongoing challenges within the NOPD may differ greatly from what I was told by some of its current and former members. Mayor Cantrell and Chief Ferguson control the NOPD, so the officers were discussing internal problems with their bosses. That creates a certain dynamic. I’m a reporter, and the recent conversations I’ve had about the NOPD took on a different dynamic. One former officer told me that I should take everything I’m hearing with a grain of salt since there can be hesitation or bias on behalf of any given officer based on his or her experience with the NOPD. In all, I spoke with ten people. Five of them agreed to a recorded interview. They have either retired or resigned from the department. Three agreed to identify themselves. All of them are seriously concerned for the safety of the public and some of the officers they left behind.
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