New Orleans, US Justice Department move to end police department’s consent decree

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion Friday in federal court to take steps to end long-standing federal oversight of the city’s police department.

The city and the federal government had agreed to a reform pact for the New Orleans Police Department known as a consent decree in 2013, two years after a Department of Justice investigation found evidence of racial bias and misconduct from the city’s police.

If U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan of the Eastern District of Louisiana approves the motion, the city and its police department will have two more years under federal oversight to show they are complying with reform measures enacted during the consent decree before it is lifted.

“Today’s filing recognizes the significant progress the City of New Orleans and the New Orleans Police Department have made to ensure constitutional and fair policing,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement.

Morgan said in a statement that she plans to hold a public hearing within the next 45 days to allow members of the community to weigh in on whether they think the city and its police department should be allowed to wind down federal oversight.

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The city’s Independent Police Monitor Stella Cziment said in a statement that the voices of city residents must be “heard, considered and weighed” in determining whether to allow the consent decree process to enter its final stages. But she noted the consent decree was always intended to be phased out over time.

“The reforms put into place, the officers that embrace those reforms, and the community that championed the reforms are not going anywhere,” she said. “The work continues.”

The Office of the Independent Police Monitor is an independent civilian police oversight agency created by voters in a 2008 charter referendum. It is tasked with holding the police department accountable and ensuring it is following its own rules, policies, as well as city, state and federal laws.

The Justice Department had found in 2011 that New Orleans police used deadly force without justification, repeatedly made unconstitutional arrests and engaged in racial profiling. Officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths were “investigated inadequately or not at all” the Justice Department said.

Relations between Morgan and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell have been strained, with the mayor saying the consent decree has been a drain on the city’s resources. Complying with federal monitoring has cost the city millions.

The mayor’s office said it would release a statement later Friday regarding the filing.

Morgan said she “applauds the progress” the New Orleans Police Department had made so far. She added that the court would take “swift and decisive action” if the city and police department failed to follow the ongoing reform efforts.

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Jack Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.