Speaking with WWL’s Newell Normand Friday morning, former NOPD Chief Ronal Serpas talked about the challenges New Orleans poses for any potential candidate for top cop.
Serpas praised the International Association of Chiefs of Police as it was announced the city had finally signed the contract with them to begin a search for a new police chief.
“If the IACP did the search that was done by Mayor Landrieu that I came in on, and that was a multi-month project. It wasn’t as complicated in 2010 as it is today,” Serpas says. “You have four or five different community meetings and four different parts of the community. You have all these other private meetings with business leaders, religious leaders, community leaders, you have the search process itself, the interviews.”
But, Serpas says the challenges presented by New Orleans itself are enough to try any candidate’s senses.
“First consideration: What is the Mayor’s standing in the community? How powerful are they? Because you need them to get things done. The second consideration is how powerful is the relationship between the Mayor and the City Council? The third most powerful consideration is what is the state of the department itself? Fourth, what is the community’s perception of crime, fear of crime and absolute crime? We need to think about New Orleans against those four things.”
Taking all of that into consideration, Serpas says adroitly, “I wouldn’t even apply. Because those four things are so out of whack,” he went on to explain. “The Mayor’s relationship is on TV every day. The Council’s relationship with the Police Department and the fighting of crime and with the Mayor don’t appear to be aligned at all. The Department has dropped from 1,600 to 900 in the past ten years with the figment of imagination that there’s still going to be 1,200 people. And the community is exasperated with violent crime!”
Serpas continues, “And we haven’t even talked about the criminal justice system which the Chief would have to work with. Which makes the requirement that the Mayor is powerful, because the Mayor has to make the way for you to go and talk to the judges and talk with the District Attorney.”
Serpas says the want for an out-of-town Chief to come to New Orleans is the willingness to change. Unfortunately the city is not projecting a desire for change. He says that’s not a lot of incentive for a change agent.
So there’s a lot for a top cop candidate to consider…
