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    • Sucking. Kirkpatrick, federal monitor addresses delays in some NOPD promotions
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    Sucking. Kirkpatrick, federal monitor addresses delays in some NOPD promotions

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

    “A morale killer in our department has been a culture of — even a belief, if you will — if not a fact, that promotions within this department have historically not 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, which would be the first such promotions at the NOPD in more than 30 years. Kirkpatrick said her goal is to tweak the system and implement changes in how officers are promoted in the near future.

    “It’s a big goal,” she said. “And it has to be a goal, because it has to do with the morality and the legitimacy of how you get promoted and get what you deserve, based on your merits and merits alone.”

    PANO and the Black Police Organization want an investigation into the public service to determine why promotions are being delayed. The organizations accuse Mayor LaToya Cantrell of delaying promotions because of an investigation into her relationship with now-retired NOPD officer Jeffrey Vappie.

    “The Vappie investigation is not the case,” Kirkpatrick said.

    Rafael Goyeneche, chairman of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said: “We received complaints when this list was stopped from a number of police officers. They raised the issue that the mayor somehow pressured the superintendent to stop the process from going forward.”

    Kirkpatrick told the committee he wants everyone to have confidence in the screening and promotion process. She said a civil service inquiry was “fair play”. Kirkpatrick said he doesn’t think that will impact the NOPD’s requested move to exit the consent decree.

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

    Meanwhile, federal consent decree monitors tasked with overseeing the implementation of longstanding police department reforms commented on the promotion controversy at a public hearing Monday night.

    Senior Monitor Jonathan Aronie said he believes the NOPD’s promotion process is fair. But he and his monitoring team are continuing to investigate the process and plan to issue a report with their findings.

    “If there is a suggestion of bias in the test, we would never stop ourselves from checking that, evaluating that.” said Aronia. “As far as whether or not City Hall gets involved in that, if they do, that’s going to be a problem.”

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

    “It’s our understanding that the mayor or City Hall wanted the whole thing to be stopped, squashed or canceled, whatever,” Aronie said. “It is our understanding that the NOPD said, ‘No. You are not allowed to do that. You cannot change the rules of the game after the game has been played. The city is part of the consent decree. They can’t break either.”

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