Anne Kirkpatrick announced on WWL that, this past week, the New Orleans Police Department just onboarded its first official part-time officer, a step that the chief hopes will help alleviate the agency’s #1 issue: staffing.
“We had a large conference come into this city that was law enforcement,” Kirkpatrick explains. “These were national-level police chiefs, from Hawaii to Canada. The number one issue, not just for New Orleans, but for everyone, is staffing. Everyone’s hurting, and we continue to struggle trying to get back to any pre-pandemic levels.”
Despite an understaffed force, however, Kirkpatrick revealed that crime levels remain low and that the NOPD will issue a press release soon about how the department has “been working again with our partners to do a very proactive surge in our community of high-risk offenders.”
“We’ve made some incredible arrests, and it’s really been amazing,” Kirkpatrick continues. “For several days now, we’ve had some very quiet and peaceful days. I always enjoy it when we are able to show the fruits of our labors… That’s going to come out here in a couple of days, we’ll be able ot show the city what we’ve been doing.”
Addressing overtime will take cooperation from the city government
Another issue plaguing NOPD is overtime management, something Kirkpatrick explains is manageable if the city can budget to make the necessary corrections.
“The question isn't can you work the overtime, the question is did you work that overtime?... Out of 1,300 employees, you're always gonna have someone who wants to push the envelope. What we have done is to try to look at the systems that would prevent opportunity. And one of those is to return to officers having to punch a biometric clock,” says Kirkpatrick.
The NOPD Chief says that OT abuse, in part, was unintentionally exacerbated by the consent decree, which altered the system and opened it for abuse.
“The idea was to separate totally (under the consent decree), to have complete independence. But the problem with that is, you're going to have so much independence that now you've created another problem, which is our sergeants, our supervisors, are blind,” Kirkpatrick explains.
“There are officers who accepted details through a totally different department,” she continues, “which is the Office of Police Secondary Employment (OPSI), and they don't even know they're out there. So you're trying to fix one problem, and you opened up a floodgate to another problem.”
OPSI is an entirely separate database from the system sergeants and supervisors have access to, and the two “don’t talk,” according to Kirkpatrick.
The solution, system integration, will require involvement from Deputy Mayor Michael Harrison to step in to advocate for the necessary changes.
“I can't make that happen. That's not under my authority to make that happen,” Kirkpatrick says. “We can tell you where the problem is. We can tell you what the fix is, but it requires money. We don't have the money… It has to be the City Council who will give us the money. I mean, that's how it works.”
New Orleans to use drones for “Security, not as surveillance.”
By a narrow vote, the New Orleans City Council recently approved the NOPD's plan to use drones for emergency response.
“Using drones is smart policing,” Kirkpatrick states. “It is efficient. It is effective. It's safe. And so I'm a big advocate for the drones for expanding that program.”
The program—funded by the French Quarter Management District—will roll out first in the French Quarter, with hopes to expand city-wide.
However, Kirkpatrick clarifies the importance of assigning clear meaning to NOPD's new airborne officers.
“Is the drone surveillance or is the drone security?” Kirkpatrick asks rhetorically. “Those are two different issues, and I think that we use it as security, not as surveillance. I've said all along we do not surveil our people, and we're not going to surveil them, but it is a security eye in the sky.”
