NEW ORLEANS – Rank and file NOPD officers are becoming disenchanted and disgruntled with NOPD leadership and the leadership’s tactics being used to fight crime, according to an anonymous letter reportedly from some New Orleans police officers addressed to the people of the city.
“Dear Citizens of New Orleans,
“We, the men and women of the New Orleans Police Department, would like to express our concern to you about our current state of affairs. Most of our officers entered their career in Law Enforcement because of a desire to help and to protect citizens in need. We are experiencing difficulty in doing this at this time.”
The letter was posted on the Police Association of New Orleans’s website and is from an anonymous platoon of officers from an unnamed district.
“Which platoon, and which district is irrelevant. It is the words of the officers, not those of PANO. This letter represents what we are hearing all over the department and from all ranks and commands. And as such, it becomes the words of the Association,” writes Mike Glasser, PANO President.
Fear of reprisal from NOPD leadership is one reason for the anonymity, according to the letter.
The letter decries the emphasis on statistic-focused policing from pro-active units that are being employed currently under Superintendent Ronal Serpas and by previous superintendents.
“We have continuously expressed our concerns and needs to our leaders, but they continue to ignore our pleas, responding with ‘political’ answers that don’t directly answer our concerns, or we are told that our needs are ‘not an option’. This neglect of our needs has caused many of us to become frustrated, disgruntled, and to question our career choice as well as question our continued loyalty to the department,” says the letter.
Superintendent Ronal Serpas said many of the officers his administration talks to have a different take than the one offered on the PANO site.
"We regularly hear from hundreds of hard-working New Orleans Police officers who appreciate that this department is undergoing a transformation to make it better, and they're excited to be a part of this," he said. "I want to thank them for their dedication, their patience, and I share with them their desire to succeed so that we can better serve the people of New Orleans."
The letter comes at a particularly difficult time for the New Orleans Police Department, with the federal government bearing down on the force in the wake of the convictions of officers following the Danziger and Henry Glover trials and an escalation in violence on the streets of New Orleans.
“Many of the concerns of the rank and file Officers of N.O.P.D. have been documented in the Department of Justice report that highlights many of the problems of the N.O.P.D.. We are frustrated that when we expressed these concerns to our leadership, they had been ignored until the Department of Justice came to point them out. If only our Leadership had listened to the rank and file earlier, we may not have needed Federal intervention. We need a regular outlet to communicate with the Citizens, one where we can express concerns to you without the fear of retaliation from Command Staff,” says the letter.
The letter says the police force with approximately 1,320 officers is too small to adequately fight crime, as only 300 to 400 officers are actually patrolling the city. And as the size of the NOPD has shrunk, the murder rate has grown in recent years.
“We should have a higher percentage of our Officers on the platoons with a mix of one Officer and two Officer units, as well as field Supervisors who are actually in the field instead of tied up with administrative chores. If we can assign 700 Officers to work special events, why can’t we assign 700 Officers to patrol neighborhoods and respond to Citizens calls on a regular basis?”
“Our manpower and resources are spread thin in order to concentrate on pro-active policing and more recently, to satisfy the requirements of our Data Driven programs (DDACT), rather than on the basic police service,” says the letter, adding “with the number of officers leaving the department, we should be in a state of emergency.”
In place of officers patrolling, the letter says that money and resources from the current and previous administrations have been steered too often to “computer programs that are just a more modern version of basic police tools that we have already…”
Instead of implementing new costly programs and measures, the letter calls for resources to be used for basic needs such as fixing broken equipment like police vehicles, and the “current rank structure should be re-organized so that more supervisors are providing the bottom line service of protecting the Citizens rather than administrative and data driven tasks.”
When the statistical goals are not met, according to the letter, officers within the ranks are facing “punitive transfers” and “micro-managing every minute of a platoon officer's time, instead of fixing the root problem of inadequate staffing and resources for the platoons.”
In response to the level of discord from officers with NOPD leadership, the letter suggests it is the public that can demand change how the NOPD is run.
“We feel the need to reach out to you, the Citizens because we have no voice within our Department. Some have suggested a Strike or ‘Blue Flu’ protest, but we are here to serve You, the Citizens, and we realize these options would not be beneficial to you. Some have suggested a protest on our off time at City Hall or Police Headquarters, but we fear punitive action from our administration. Although we have no Labor Union, we are grateful that we have a Police Association that is willing to speak for the Officers. But the Administration has no obligation to respond to our concerns. But they are obligated to respond to YOU.”
