“How is the police department going to get their nose above water?” asked Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission this week on WWL with Newell Normand. He said the “only path that I see is going to be, you know, a strategic plan dealing with proactive policing, hotspot policing, and I think a reliance on technology as force multipliers.”
Goyeneche and Normand tackled a number of issues the police force faces. One major issue, in his eyes, is the leadership of Mayor LaToya Cantrell.
“The mayor is a city employee. She is answerable to the public,” he said. “The mayor believes that she isn’t answerable to anybody and the council is disabusing her of that impression.”
As the City Council does this, Cantrell has made some “surprising” decisions, said Goyeneche. These include her appointment of Anne Kirkpatrick, formerly chief of the Oakland Police Department in California, as the new chief of the New Orleans Police Department. Even Normand thinks Kirkpatrick is a solid choice, since she’s not part of the current NOPD system.
Still, Kirkpatrick will have a lot of work cut out for her, from staffing to the investigation into Officer Jeffrey Vappie. Listen here to get Goyeneche’s full analysis.