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    • Support. Kirkpatrick, federal monitor address delays in some NOPD promotions
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    Support. Kirkpatrick, federal monitor address delays in some NOPD promotions

    Harry Posted on

    NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – A year after Anne Kirkpatrick was confirmed as superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, she promised the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee to solve what she called one of the department’s biggest problems.

    “The morale killer in our department, if not the reality, was a culture — we might even say a belief — that promotions in this department have not historically been based on merit,” Kirkpatrick said Monday, Oct. 28.

    According to the Police Association of New Orleans (PANO), the promotion of 10 captains to the rank of major has been delayed; These promotions will be the first of their kind at the NOPD in more than 30 years. Kirkpatrick said his goal is to fine-tune the system in the near future and implement changes to how officers are promoted.

    “This is a big goal,” he said. “And that needs to be a goal, because it’s about the morale and the legitimacy of how you get promoted and get what you deserve based solely on your merits and virtues.”

    PANO and the Black Police Organization are calling for a civil service investigation to determine why promotions were delayed. The organizations accuse Mayor LaToya Cantrell of delaying promotions because of the investigation into her relationship with now-retired NOPD officer Jeffrey Vappie.

    “That’s not the case with the Vappie investigation,” Kirkpatrick said.

    Metropolitan Crime Commission Chairman Rafael Goyeneche said, “I received complaints from some police officers about the discontinuation of this list. “They raised the issue that the mayor was somehow pressuring the superintendent to stop the process from moving forward.”

    Kirkpatrick told the committee he wants everyone to have confidence in the testing and promotion process. He said the civil service investigation was “fair game”. Kirkpatrick said he does not believe this will affect the NOPD’s requested move to exit the consent decree.

    “This is an example of what you do under sustainment. This is where the department itself says, ‘We’re going to check this because we want to check it.’ ‘Not because a federal watchdog told us to do it, not because the Justice Department told us to do it.’”

    Meanwhile, federal consent decree monitors tasked with overseeing implementation of the department’s long-running police reforms commented on the promotion debate at a public meeting Monday night.

    Chief monitor Jonathan Aronie said it was the NOPD’s view that the promotion process was fair. But he and his monitoring team continue to investigate the process and plan to release a report on their findings.

    “If there is a bias in the test, we will never stand in the way of checking it, evaluating it.” said Aronie. “As for whether City Hall is going to get involved in this, if it does, that would be a problem.”

    U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan will have the final say on whether the delay affects NOPD’s desire to begin the two-year continuation period before the consent decree is lifted.

    “We understand that the mayor or the Mayor’s Office wants everything to be stopped, suppressed or canceled,” Aronie said. “We understand that NOPD said ‘No.’ You cannot do this. ‘You can’t change the rules of the game once it’s played.’ It’s part of the city’s consent decree. They also cannot violate.”

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    Harry
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