Federal Oversight of New Orleans Police Force Ends after 12 Years

A federal judge ended her 12-year oversight of the New Orleans Police Department on Wednesday, clearing the city and Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick to run the city's police force free of the court monitoring and blueprint for reform that officials say has helped transform a department once mired in scandal.

U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan issued her order shortly before 1 p.m. inside a Loyola Law School auditorium packed with current and former police brass and city officials.

"Everyone in this room should be rightly proud about what NOPD accomplished here," Morgan said.

Morgan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, granted the longstanding request by Mayor LaToya Cantrell — and recently joined by the Justice Department — to terminate the consent decree before work by the department on a 2-year "sustainment" plan was complete.

Her order marks the end of an era for the city's police force. The NOPD consent decree spanned the bulk of the last two mayoral administrations and the work of five police chiefs, including Kirkpatrick and former interim chief Michelle Woodfork, who was among four of them in attendance.

It followed a Justice Department report in 2011 that found the city's police force had made a habit of violating residents' constitutional rights, with tragic consequences.

"We have been at this for more than a decade," Morgan told a crowd, dressed mostly in blue. "We all shared the same goal: turning the NOPD into a first-class, empathetic, procedurally just, constitutional law enforcement agency."

Several of the police officials and others involved in creating or implementing the consent decree in its early years attended Wednesday's proceeding, along with Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams, Mayor-elect Helena Moreno and all of the City Council.

'Our police department is better'

The milestone drew praise for what was described as a transformation for a police force that federal civil rights investigators once viewed as among the nation's worst.

"There can be no question that our city is safer, and our police department is better, as a direct result of this case," said Acting U.S. Attorney Michael M. Simpson for the Eastern District of Louisiana in a prepared statement. "The NOPD's reforms have already borne many good fruits in our community."

Lead monitor Jonathan Aronie said the consent decree "allowed the good kids to take back the playground, and they have."

The cost was $20 million to the federal monitors alone over its 12 years, among other expenses associated with reaching myriad benchmarks under what was at the time it was implemented most expansive police consent decree in the U.S.

Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill totaled the tab at around $100 million in a statement that also congratulated the city. A report last year by state Legislative Auditor Michael Waguespack's office cited a city estimate of $61.3 million resulting from the consent decree, including the monitor's cost.

But Morgan said she's repeatedly asked critics for a tally of exorbitant costs and never received one. Still, she said that whatever the tab, it likely saved the city millions on police misconduct payouts.

"If you think the cost of constitutional policing is high, try the cost of unconstitutional policing," she said.

A national trend

Morgan praised the monitors and said she was confident in the community's role going forward in holding the department accountable. She pointed to the sheer breadth of reforms the NOPD undertook, responding to criticism over the duration of the agreement under her watch.

"It did not take too long. It took the amount of time necessary for the NOPD to make the changes called for and to make them durable, able to stand the test of time," Morgan said. "A premature rush through the process just to be done would have been a tragedy."

The Trump administration has expressed an aversion to law enforcement consent decrees, and the NOPD's is the seventh police reform case to be resolved this year, according to a DOJ statement on Wednesday.

"We credit the officers and supervisors who have transformed NOPD — despite local political obstacles — and who continue to work to keep communities safe," said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in a statement.

Jonas Geissler, a DOJ attorney involved in the NOPD case, told the audience in New Orleans on Wednesday that it wasn't politics, but the department's progress that has forced an end to the reform pact.

"The case is complete because the remedies are durable and have been met," he said. "But for some local political impediments, this work may have been completed a number of years ago under a prior administration."

He declined to elaborate after Wednesday's event.

Officials took pains Wednesday to describe the NOPD's graduation from federal court oversight as a "handoff" of those functions.

"The consent decree has ended, but the work continues," independent police monitor Stella Cziment said in a statement.

Although the meeting was live-streamed, it was not open to the public, a decision that Cziment's office and a group of demonstrators criticized Wednesday.

About 25 protesters gathered outside the law school, their chants audible at times inside the auditorium, overpowering Kirkpatrick's remarks during a media briefing afterward.

"The community had no role to play in this (decision to end the consent decree), and so what we're saying is we need community oversight," said organizer Toni Jones.

Protestors briefly surrounded an NOPD vehicle at the intersection of Broadway and Dominican streets, blocking its departure, until police back-up units arrived at around 1:30 p.m.

______________

© 2025 The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate.

Visit www.nola.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.