Today New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and NOPD Chief Shaun Ferguson will discuss crimefighting. City officials say the mayor and chief are focused on crime, and the New Orleans Police Department should be praised.
"We do need to support and uplift the work that the NOPD is doing because they are showing results," said New Orleans Mayor's Office spokesman Beau Tidwell.
Despite a recent rise in carjackings and homicides, Tidwell said cops are working hard to arrest criminals.
"There was an armed carjacking in the Fourth District (Monday) that was cleared almost immediately with three arrests," Tidwell elaborated. "Officers from the Third and Fourth Districts worked together, made three arrests. All three were in possession of a firearm, and the NOPD got them and got those guns off the street."
The New Orleans City Council has asked the chief to show them a strategy for crimefighting. The mayor and the chief will have more to say about it later Wednesday at NOPD headquarters.
Former NOPD Chief Ronal Serpas says if that plan hinges on pulling in law enforcement from other departments like harbor police, levee police, university police, it won't work.
"These are old, tired ideas that have come up decades ago, that are prohibited by statute, prohibited by levels of training and authority," he said. "It's an excuse."
Serpas says NOPD officers have higher training and certification requirements than other departments in Louisiana, and hiring a non-NOPD officer would likely still require four or more months of additional training before they could be deployed.
