State Attorney General Liz Murrill has urged a federal court to lift a 12-year-old consent decree governing the operation of the New Orleans Police Department, saying that the decree is siphoning more than $1.4 million from city coffers annually.
Murrill sent a letter to the clerk of court in the Eastern District of Louisiana on Nov. 8. Her action follows the filing of a joint motion in September by city officials and the U.S. Department of Justice aimed at winding down the consent decree through a two-year “sustainment” period.
Put in place in 2012 after a federal probe of the department’s policing policies, the consent decree was designed to reform illegal use-of-force practices, discriminatory conduct and lax oversight of the department.
Murrill’s letter urges the federal district judge, Susie Morgan, to put an end to the consent decree. The decree has achieved its intended purpose since the department is no longer in violation of any federal law, she said, and the bureaucracy put in place to enforce reforms is wasting local and state resources and enriching attorneys in Washington, D.C.
““The parties agree that the city of New Orleans has met its obligations under the current consent decree, and this new one imposes new obligations and new costs with no sign of ending anytime soon,” Murrill said in her letter. “It’s time to end NOPD’s consent decree once and for all, to take the handcuffs off of the brave men and women who serve as officers in that Police Department and put them back on the criminals to increase public safety for all residents.”
At a minimum, the two-year clock on the consent decree should begin now, and no new requirements should be imposed on the department beyond what’s in the decree, Murrill said.
The team that monitors the decree’s provisions bills the city $115,000 per month on average, with the total 12-year price tag for the oversight reaching $16.5 million in taxpayer dollars, she said. In addition, the costs of implementing the police reforms has surged to $132 million, according to Murrill’s letter.
“Over the last decade, the monitoring fees and reform costs together are estimated to have cost the city a jaw-dropping $150 million, which does not include the city’s attorney fees for this case,” she said.
The letter also said that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has called on district courts to end institutional-reform consent decrees. The siphoning of funds to maintain the consent decree has harmed the city’s ability to hire new officers, leading to soaring increases in crime, according to Murrill’s letter.
The city’s criminal justice commissioner, Tenisha Stevens, said in late September that the agreement between the city and federal officials marked a milestone.
“This transition signals that the department has made measurable progress in constitutional policing and reflects our collective commitment to ensuring these reforms become part of the department's culture," Stevens said. “... The (September) filing reflects over a decade of reforms and improvements made by the NOPD, and this joint motion is the next step in ensuring those gains are sustained over the long term.”
Neither New Orleans officials nor community groups involved in policing issues responded to requests for comment.
While he was running for governor last year, Jeff Landry also filed a legal brief in favor of terminating the consent decree, concluding that needed reforms had been implemented and that continuing the decree represented a “pernicious threat to federalism.”