NOCOP Statement on June 5th Consent Decree Hearing

June 5, 2024

NOCOP was deeply troubled by the presentations made by the Consent Decree Monitors and NOPD representatives at the today's hearing to decide the fate of the NOPD consent decree. We were even more troubled that Judge Susie Morgan seemed to find them credible.  

There was no talk in the hearing of several disturbing findings in recent reports from multiple monitoring agencies that contradict the narrative of progress and "bias-free policing" being told by the NOPD and the monitoring team alike. These include:

• A staggering 54.9% increase in NOPD use of force against Black women and a 9.2% increase against Black men in the last year alone according to the Independent police Monitor's 2023 report. Nearly 90% of all individuals subjected to force by the NOPD in 2023 were Black-- this despite Black people making up only about 57% of the population of the city.

• Significantly-reduced NOPD compliance with several force-reporting practices measured by the Professional Standards and Accountability Bureau as demonstrated by their August 2023 and January 2024 Use of Force Audits. These failures include a significant decrease in submission of Officer Force Statements and some districts showing as little as 0% compliance with activation of dashboard cameras in compliance with NOPD policy.

• Monitors also made no attempt to examine police bias in the context of protests, or in relation to the Arabic-speaking or Muslim community which has seen a disturbing uptick in rates of level 4 use of force (the most serious and dangerous force deployed by the NOPD) at protests opposing ongoing US support for the Israeli government's assault on Gaza.

NOCOP was also disturbed by seemingly-questionable methodology deployed by monitors who concluded that NOPD was essentially free of racial bias despite staggering and disproportionate racial disparities in use of force and searches for weapons. 

In the case of one bias-audit of those stopped and searched for weapons during Mardi Gras where 93.3% of those targeted by NOPD were Black, monitors claimed that they saw no evidence of bias on body-cam footage without even articulating what they would count as evidence of "bias." A police officer does not have to use a racial-slur while disproportionately frisking Black New Orleanians in order to demonstrate bias. The disproportionate searches are themselves evidence of bias. It is notoriously difficult to prove the intent of any individual beyond a reasonable doubt, and the absence of willfully-expressed racial hostility when police know they are being recorded does not at all ensure an absence of bias as the monitors contended. Furthermore, the monitors offered no alternative explanation for these huge and disproportionate racial disparities in searches. If the NOPD wishes to understand the racial biases of its officers there are far more sensitive psychological instruments to measure implicit bias and attitudes towards Black people among the police. We await the publication of the reports presented at the hearing today for public and academic scrutiny.

In the meantime we call upon all New Orleanians to make their voices heard, particularly at the next Criminal Justice Committee hearing by City Council on June 27th at 1300 Perdido st. . Let your City Council representative know that the NOPD is not ready to be free of federal monitoring with racial disparities this large in their policing.