After Hurricane Katrina, four police officers shot and killed two people in an incident on the Danziger Bridge.
By Terry Frieden, CNN Justice Producer updated 7:50 PM EDT, Tue July 24, 2012
Justice Department, New Orleans Police Department agree on overhaul
Washington (CNN) -- Attorney General Eric Holder led federal and local officials Tuesday in announcing a massive overhaul of the New Orleans Police Department, which has been plagued for years by corruption, excessive use of force, illegal searches and widespread racial discrimination.
In what Holder called the most wide-ranging such agreement in the nation's history, the Justice Department and NOPD reached a deal on a consent decree that was filed in federal court in New Orleans. The deal includes more than 100 recommendations dealing with virtually every aspect of the department.
"The consent decree requires the Police Department to make broad changes in policies and practices relating to use of force, stops, searches, arrests, and interrogations," Holder said.
Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, who heads the Justice Civil Rights Division and played a key role in the agreement, joined Holder and top city officials at a New Orleans news conference.
"This landmark consent decree is the most comprehensive agreement the Civil Rights Division has ever entered into with a police department," Perez said, "and it will serve as a blueprint for reform for departments across the country."
If, as expected, a federal judge approves the agreement, it will mark a dramatic day in the police department's history. A DoJ investigation in the 1990s resulted in a temporary improvement in police conduct, but officials say there was no court-backed consent decree with tough requirements, and the NOPD slipped back into its old ways of doing things.
Officials said they expect the agreement will stick because of the wide-ranging, detailed requirements including a minimum of four years of federal and court monitoring.
The sweeping agreement requires detailed documentation of cases in which police use force, and a review of each case by officials in the police department's Public Integrity Bureau.
Even traffic stops are dealt with in the agreement because of complaints of inappropriate police conduct, and racial profiling. Officials also said the agreement makes an important change by requiring the videotaping of suspect interviews to ensure there are no longer threats to harm the suspect or his family.
Payment for off-duty security work, which had been a source of department corruption, will be limited and carefully scrutinized.
One of the most egregious examples of police misconduct stemmed from a fatal shooting at the city's Danziger Bridge in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Four police officers shot and killed two people and wounded four others in the incident, but only in the past year did a federal court exact punishment on the officers.
Other police departments, including those in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, also have agreed to consent decrees with the DoJ for controversial policies and patterns of alleged misconduct. But officials familiar with the cases say they do not compare with the heavy requirements being placed on the NOPD.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu has been fully supportive of federal efforts to clean up the department. The federal investigation was launched shortly after Landrieu took office in 2010.
The probe led to findings in March 2011 that the department was riddled with corruption and suffered from management dysfunction. Details on how to address the many problems have been hammered out behind closed doors the past several months.
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Today is
New Orleans Police Department is the
Epitome of the PDs in the U.S.
The Feds initiated its investigation of the NOPD after 5 Police Offers were found "Not Guilty" after a trial that accused them of shooting a innocent man attempting to cross the Danziger Bridge during the Hurricane Katrina debacle.
The subsequent investigation by the feds, conclude with guilty verdicts for some, and plea deals by other officers, and during the feds investigations, the findings announced by the feds revealed startling results, from a federal authority perspective, but, broadly known results that the citizens of NO were already complaining of for decades.
Here's my opinions of the NOPD Fed investigations:
3/18/11 : Federal investigation claims abuses among New Orleans police
" Among the findings are that the police department has used excessive force, made unconstitutional stops and searches, and illegally profiled people based on race, ethnicity and sexual orientation."
3/31/11 : Ex-cops sentenced in killing of man after Katrina
" Warren shot Glover to death and ex-officer Gregory McRae later burned his body in a car near a police station. "
8/04/11 : New Orleans cops convicted of post-Katrina shootings
" Madison was trying to flee the scene when he was shot, according to a Justice Department statement. One of the officers allegedly "stomped and kicked" Madison before he died, the statement noted. "
3/27/2012 : New Orleans cop suspended over 'thug' post on Trayvon case
" Jason Giroir identified himself as a New Orleans police officer when he posted the comment on Sunday below a story on the WWL-TV website about a local rally in support of Trayvon, the 17-year-old Florida boy who was killed by a neighborhood watch captain.
Giroir's comment: "Act like a Thug Die Like one!" "
The U.S. Police Departments, "all" require deep investigations
Citizens around the entire country, have been complaining about police misconduct, police profiling, police corruption, and police abuse of authority, and with all of these types of complaints by citizens around the country each year, the response has always been the same, and continue to be the same to this day...
"This Police Department does not reflect the personality of a few bad apples".
The Reality..., if 1 bad apple can spoil an entire bunch of apples, how much harm can "a few bad apples do, and how fast"?
A Huge Problem with Police Abuse Tracking
By Law Standards, each State is treated as an independent state and is allowed to create, design and enforce all of its laws independently and separately from any other state, to the extent that, if the same crime is committed in two different states, by the same person, on the same day, his punishment will range for small differences in sentencing to huge differences in sentencing by the two states.
Additionally, each state is required to investigate reports of police misconduct, but, each state can implement their investigations based on the states own procedures and rules.
There is no singular system that all states must follow, with respect to a standard practice of conducting investigations of allegations of police misconduct, police profiling, or any other type of allegations against any law enforcement officer, within these United States of America.
Good Old Boy Protectionism & Shared Corruption
Fact: Any group of humans that all swear any type of loyalty to any system, will become the system itself, and will protect the system and it's fellow participants.
Fact: Thousands of examples of police lying in reports of all kinds, have been proven, yet, the system of police incident reporting has not changed, or have under gone any type of a transparent system of police report logging, verification, and validation process.
Fact: Even police patrol cars that have installed video cameras that are meant to record all police interactions with civilians, have a control system that allows the officer to turn off the video at specific times, as deemed necessary by the police officer.
Fact: Even when law enforcement officers are proven guilty of police mal behavior, the punishment, often times, are far below the required degree of punishment that would suggest that a law enforcement officer is held to twice the standard of honesty as the average citizen, based on the officer's position of authority.
Fact: Police Officer's educational requirements to join the police force is only a High School Diploma, which means that any "tom" off the street can apply, and all police departments are infested with cronyism and nepotism.
A Flawed and None Consistent Justice System negatively affects each citizen.
Allowing each state to write and enforce its own laws, based on the individual's states choice, is a flawed system of equal protection under "the" law, in that, not one law is treated, consistently, the same across all the states in the U.S.....
The Inconsistency in law enforcement allows subjective enforcement of all laws, which opens the door to racism, profiling and un-equal distribution of doled out punishment.
The United States Bill of Rights is written for every American Citizen, yet, somehow, the U.S. Government, and each State's Government, allows each state to enforce the bill of rights, differently in each state, which is a direct contradiction of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
A Legal System of Consistency is necessary
The Current Judicial System has grown completely flawed, and recent "Supreme Court Rulings" provide very good examples of how, even the highest court in the U.S., has gone a stray, regarding interpretation of laws and the consequences of rulings of law and the direct affect of the interpretations, on all American Citizens.
This System of 50 different interpretations of a single law, and it's enforcement and subsequent doling out of sentencing, must be consistent, in order to ensure that every American Citizen is ensured equal consideration and equal punishment, based on the crime committed.
The New Orleans Police Department has set the precedent as to the direction of what is required for every law enforcement agency in the United States of America.
In My Opinion
ASMFMB
5/1/2012
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