According to the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 2022 ended with more murders than any year since 1996, with more than 700 incidents (which does not count actual victims) of shootings and a 39% increase in reported armed robberies. Put another way, 2022, compared to 2019, shows gains of 131% in homicide, 88% in shootings, 156% in carjacking and 20% in armed robbery calls to the New Orleans Police Department.
Science and experience continue to tell us that "hot spots" and proactive policing reduce crime. Staffing decisions by city elected leaders since at least 2011 have created a department that can only respond or react after a crime has occurred — the direct opposite of proactive policing. This disservice is being felt by New Orleanians and NOPD officers every day.
Recent efforts to reduce crime, including 12-hour shifts and realigning detective duties, are reactive measures. The data above and recent reports to the City Council suggests that these changes have had little to no impact.
A key to hot spot and proactive policing is for the police to engage in constitutional policing in cooperation with the community and be adequately staffed to interact with suspicious persons before a crime is committed.
To this point, the City Council's publicly available consent decree dashboard gives another startling analysis. The "stop and search" feature presents data points of the cumulative number of "individuals stopped over 180 days." This data is an insight into the proactivity of officers. For example, on Jan. 2, 2015, there had been 32,913 stops in the prior 180 days. As of Jan. 18, 2023, there had been 5,095 over the equivalent period.
The chart shows that during COVID, stops were down; that's to be expected. Following COVID, stops increased to the highest recorded data of 14,303 in the period leading up to Aug. 17, 2021, before an uninterrupted decline in the activity to today's rate. Before COVID, the total never fell below 20,000 and often fluctuated between 25-30,000 stops.
The consent decree monitors have long observed these practices to ensure constitutional conduct. I support the federal consent decree because it can help police be legally proactive. In my view, the significant decline in stops is unrelated to the consent decree. The unrelenting shortage of NOPD officers is far more likely the reason.
The sustained drop in stops, a sign of proactive policing, is significant for many reasons. Most critical is that the most recent crime reduction plan was built upon officers' reacting after crimes are committed versus an all-hands-on-deck approach of stopping crimes before they happen.
What is a possible solution? The NOPD is built on a model of 1,200 or so officers. Today, and for some time, there are at best around 900 officers. In 2022, it was reported that the city hired 25 new officers and lost more than 100 to separation. The mayor and City Council must recognize reality and realign the entire structure of the NOPD to meet this truth.
First, focus the NOPD's personnel, resources, equipment and facilities to function in a proactive policing, problem-solving and community-building way based on 900 officers. Budget and staff to this number.
Second, reassign current calls to the NOPD that do not require a gun and a badge to other agencies, which in the NOPD and similar departments is a sizable percentage of the calls. A clear benefit of this change is focusing police on violent crime.
Third, the NOPD cannot make these changes alone. The city's elected leaders must support, direct and approve policies and funding to other agencies, so that they can respond to citizen demands that, in far too many cases, have no police need; these calls are dispatched nonetheless to the police by the city's policies.
I have suggested this three-part strategy in public forums for more than a year. A net gain of 300 officers to reach a goal of 1,200 is not possible at any time in the near or distant future.
Ronal Serpas is a professor at Loyola University, retired New Orleans Police Department superintendent, former chief of police in Nashville and former chief of the Washington State Patrol.