Governor Jeff Landry is on record as saying he wants New Orleans to look more like Nashville in how it's run. A former New Orleans police chief who also served as Nashville's top cop has an idea to make that happen.
It's an idea that would vastly overhaul the city's juvenile justice system.
"Why not just have one juvenile judge who appoints magistrates who have to follow their will, and that juvenile judge singularly is answering to the public?" former New Orleans Police Department superintendent Ronal Serpas asked. "Nashville, with nearly 700,000, people manages to do it."
Serpas told WWL's Tommy Tucker that the juvenile court judge in Nashville appoints magistrates who then carry out his or her will.
"You don't have six or seven judges making their own decisions every day, and I think there's a long frustration with that in the New Orleans Police Department," Serpas said.
According to Serpas, New Orleans's juvenile court system allows some violent teen offenders off the hook because of the different philosophies of multiple elected judges.
"One juvenile judge can't find a young man to keep in prison who's been violent. Another one thinks about it differently, and another one thinks differently," Serpas said.
