NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has
approved a sweeping agreement between the Justice Department and the
city of New Orleans
designed to clean up the city's long-troubled police department,
but Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who once strongly backed it, said
the city wants to put the brakes on it because of costs.
Landrieu said he asked U.S. District Judge
Susie Morgan to delay final approval, largely because the Justice
Department has
also entered into a potentially expensive separate agreement with
the New Orleans sheriff for reforms at the city-funded jail.
Morgan, however, approved the agreement, calling it "fair, adequate and reasonable" in a Friday ruling.
"The Orleans Parish Prison consent decree
may cost $17 million, which is not budgeted for this year and would
therefore bankrupt
the City," Landrieu said in a news release. "If a federal judge
ordered the City to pay $17 million, we would need to furlough
every City employee, including police officers, for 28 days. It
makes no sense to furlough or lay off police officers to give
pay raises to prison guards."
"We just can't afford it," said City Council member Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a member of the council budget committee.
The mayor said earlier that he was unsure of
the city's next legal step. He noted that the city already has
implemented many
elements of the consent decree, including changes in the homicide
bureau, the K-9 unit, sex crime investigations, use-of-force
investigations and policies governing the way officers are hired
and paid for private, off-duty security details.
The separate jail agreement calls for Sheriff Marlin Gusman to provide adequate medical and mental health care and overhaul
policies on use of force and rape prevention, among other reforms.
The agreement approved Friday would require the police department to overhaul its policies and procedures for use of force,
training, interrogations, searches and arrests, recruitment and supervision.
Landrieu has estimated the city will pay roughly $11 million annually for the next four or five years to implement the reforms.
The agreement resolves the Justice
Department's allegations that New Orleans police officers engaged in a
pattern of discriminatory
and unconstitutional activity. Attorney General Eric Holder has
said the agreement is the most wide-ranging in the Justice
Department's history.
The judge heard testimony about the consent decree at a "fairness hearing" in September. At the time, then-U.S. Attorney Jim
Letten called it a blueprint for the "rebirth of the entire city of New Orleans."
Some critics had urged the judge to order some changes to the agreement. Susan Hutson, the city's independent police monitor,
said the consent decree should give her office a larger role in the reform process.
The agreement calls for picking a different,
court-supervised monitor to regularly assess and report on the
department's adherence
to the requirements. Hedge-Morrell said that is an unnecessary
expense, given that the city has Hutson in place with the needed
experience and expertise.
Lawyers for two groups representing
rank-and-file officers expressed concern that the consent decree could
chip away at civil-service
protections, may force officers to work longer hours without
overtime pay and would bar officers from using pepper spray.
The Justice Department has reached similar agreements with police departments in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Oakland
and Detroit. But the New Orleans consent decree is broader in scope and includes requirements that no other department has
had to implement.
The agreement, for instance, requires officers to respect that bystanders have a constitutional right to observe and record
their conduct in public places. It also requires officers to receive at least 24 hours of training on stops, searches and
arrests; 40 hours of use-of-force training; and four hours of training on bias-free policing.
The Police Department, which has been plagued by decades of corruption and brutality complaints, came under renewed scrutiny
following a string of police shootings in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In 2011, the Justice Department issued a
scathing report that said the city's police officers have often used
deadly force
without justification, repeatedly made unconstitutional arrests
and engaged in racial profiling. The Justice Department's
civil rights division also launched a series of criminal probes
focusing on police officers' actions during Katrina's aftermath.