Policy Panel: Consent to Change: The Impact of New Orleans’s Consent Decree on its Police

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

Like other departments around the nation, the New Orleans Police Department is currently implementing many operational changes required by a federal Consent Decree. The Consent Decree is the result of a long history of problems, including excessive uses of force, biased policing, poor training, and other patterns and practices of police misconduct exposed and proven in a series of section 1983 lawsuits spanning four decades. The federal Department of Justice intervened and Judge Morgan approved a consent decree in 2013. The City agreed to change many long-standing practices, with the overall aim of changing NOPD’s organizational culture. In this policy panel, several individuals who have worked closely with the Consent Decree will have a moderated discussion about its current and future impact on the New Orleans Police Department. Changes in police training, including an innovative NOPD curriculum for encouraging bystander intervention among officers to prevent misconduct before it occurs, will be covered. Panelists also will discuss the likely impact of negotiated Consent Decrees generally, as tools of police reform nationwide.

Sub Unit

• Policy Panels

Individual Presentations

• The Superintendent of Police's Perspective - Michael S. Harrison, New Orleans Police Department

• The Deputy Chief's Perspective - John Thomas, New Orleans Police Department

• The Monitor's Perspective - Jonathan Aronie, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, LLP

• The Plantiffs' Civil Rights Attorney's Perspective - Mary Howell, Private Practice Lawyer

Chair

• Candace McCoy, City University of New York (CUNY)