Louisiana State Police are returning to New Orleans

https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/jeff-landry-signals-return-of-state-police-to-new-orleans-but-what-does-that-mean/article_d453c8a2-9b9a-11ee-865b-7f0127aa88eb.html#tncms-source=featured-2

Jeff Landry signals return of State Police to New Orleans, but what does that mean?

Louisiana governor-elect hints at surge of troopers three years after they left town

Three years after Louisiana State Police quietly pulled out of New Orleans, disbanding a specially funded unit that had stood watch in the French Quarter since 2014, a return of troopers in force appears close at hand.

Gov.-elect Jeff Landry, who pledged on the campaign trail to address rampant crime in New Orleans, hinted last month at plans to surge troopers in the city as he touted a deal with Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams for the attorney general’s office to prosecute State Police arrests within the city limits.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell at her state of the city address on Wednesday gave a shoutout to state troopers, partially crediting their partnership with an understaffed New Orleans Police Department for a 21% decline in violent crime. Last week, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told business and civic leaders that Landry “is looking at giving us another full-time troop here in New Orleans.” 

The Police Department has yet to confirm any details, saying only that Kirkpatrick has spoken with State Police officials about assigning troopers to New Orleans but it remains “in the initial discussion phase with state government.” A State Police spokesperson said that along with Landry and New Orleans police, the agency “will review and implement operational plans throughout Orleans Parish after the beginning of the year.”

Kirkpatrick said she’d like to see State Police take the lead on policing interstate highways in New Orleans. That would ease a burden on her Police Department, she said, citing its recent primary role in investigating an Interstate 10 pileup related to smoke from nearby marsh fires.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, State Police handle all crashes on highways in unincorporated areas. In Orleans, the only fully incorporated parish in the state, New Orleans police have long held the responsibility. It’s unclear whether Landry plans to change that arrangement.

Red carpet

The prospect of state troopers returning on a permanent basis to the city — beyond Carnival, special events and seasonal operations with New Orleans police such as the summertime Operation Golden Eagle — drew praise from some business owners around the French Quarter.

Rhonda Findley, who has owned Quarter businesses since 1998, said troopers created a palpable sense of law and order when they watched over the city’s historic core. During their three-year absence and amid a surge in violent crime, she’s seen illegal vending, graffiti and drug dealing in the Quarter to an unprecedented degree.

“You have to have a safe community to be in the business we’re in, which is the business of selling New Orleans to the world,” Findley said. “If that means a state trooper on every corner and our new governor is willing to get them down here, where do I roll out the red carpet?”

Caution flags

Policing watchdogs are raising caution flags, however. Previous actions by state troopers in the French Quarter, working alongside New Orleans officers who operate under different rules set by a federal consent decree, sparked allegations of excessive force and racial profiling, lawsuits and concerns over transparency.

More than one federal lawsuit ended with a settlement, including one in which a young Black high-school student from Indiana, Lyle Dotson, alleged that State Police roughed him up and arrested him in a case of mistaken identity after he became separated from a field trip group. Other allegations surrounded a violent traffic stop in 2014 of trumpet player Shamarr Allen, and the 2015 arrest of a barber, Michael Baugh, who alleged that troopers mistook him for a Black criminal suspect and beat him.

Jim Craig, director of the Louisiana office of the MacArthur Justice Center, who represented Dotson, said State Police have consistently taken the position that their troopers are not bound by the federal consent decree governing the New Orleans Police Department when they work in the city.

“The NOPD consent decree, in the view of these troopers, is a toxic thing that prevents cops from being cops, as if they have to choose between following the Constitution and policing,” said Elizabeth Cumming, a MacArther Center attorney who has represented people in abuse cases against Louisiana State Police.

The birth of Troop N

It was a mass shooting on Bourbon Street days before the 2014 Essence Music Festival that brought the last big influx of state troopers to the New Orleans. A young Hammond woman was killed, and nine others were injured.

At the time, Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked Gov. Bobby Jindal for 100 full-time troopers. The commitment proved less than that but amounted to the largest state contingent called into New Orleans for public safety since Hurricane Katrina.

Those reinforcements came at a time of shriveling staffing at the New Orleans Police Department, from 1,525 officers to fewer than 1,150 in about four years. As of last week, the number hovered at 900.

Paying for police

New Orleans’ tourism industry kicked in $2.5 million to keep the troopers around. Residents and businesses in the French Quarter Management District approved a quarter-cent sales tax to help fuel the pricey patrols for five years, to the tune of a few million dollars annually.

“COVID came along, and of course the funding dried up. Nobody was buying anything in the Quarter,” said Bob Simms of the management district. Along with garbage magnate Sidney Torres IV, Simms helped form the French Quarter Task Force, with its roving Smart Cars staffed by off-duty officers.

The tax expired at the end of 2020, and State Police’s special Troop N was gone by the time the French Quarter Management District renewed it to fund other security programs in the Vieux Carre. 

‘Too aggressive’

Simms acknowledged some friction in the neighborhood with the troopers, and “some instances associated with State Police being too aggressive.” But he called their presence a positive and favors their return. Simms also noted that LSP troopers now are all equipped with body-worn cameras.

“When you can get that many people extra, on top of what we already have with NOPD, that’s a big deal,” he said.

The district attorney’s office denied a request for the new written agreement struck with the Louisiana attorney general’s office for prosecuting State Police cases in New Orleans. State Rep. Alonzo Knox, who owns a coffee shop just outside the French Quarter, said the agreement will supplement Williams’ office with state prosecutors.

“This collaboration is intended to streamline the prosecution process for criminal cases brought in by State Police and other state investigating agencies in New Orleans,” Knox said.

Metropolitan Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche said early indications from Landry are that “the State Police presence in the city of New Orleans is going to be augmented and be at a level we haven’t experienced before,” though it may take time to staff up following Landry’s Jan. 8 inauguration.

Major crime focus

The agreement with Williams’ office on prosecutions, Goyeneche said, points to a different role for State Police. He projects the focus this time will be murder, armed robberies and other serious felonies.

The added troopers “are not going to handle thefts and drug possession charges and shoplifting and things like that,’ Goyeneche said. “They’re going to handle crimes of violence, serious weapons cases.”

Goyeneche blamed past troubles with Troop N on its temporary, fluid nature.

“Those were road deputies that were brought in from other parts of the state. It’s very different than urban policing,” Goyeneche said. “This is going to be a very different State Police presence in this city. They’re not going to be operating external to the Police Department.”

Without funding limitations that kept Troop N to the French Quarter and nearby streets, the new contingent of troopers also will be free to help across the city, Goyeneche said.

Tainted reputation

Since disbanding Troop N, the reputation of State Police as Louisiana’s premier law enforcement agency has been bruised by allegations of racist abuses. The agency’s handling of the case of Ronald Greene, who died at the hands of Monroe area troopers in 2019, prompted a federal civil rights investigation that remains underway.

Craig, of the MacArthur Justice Center, criticized Landry for recently hiring a law firm to conduct a new review of State Police. 

“There is serious reason to be concerned about this move in tandem with [the governor-elect’s] and the new attorney general’s willingness to support the Cantrell administration in its attempts to terminate the NOPD consent decree,” Craig said.

The New Orleans independent police monitor, Stella Cziment, said she shares those concerns, citing a cultural and tactical mismatch between the two law enforcement agencies. Different approaches to training, equipment and policies can prove confusing or damaging, she said.

In January, Cziment’s office audited an unauthorized strip search of a New Orleans child, in which the boy was thrown to the ground and relieved of his pants in public without his parents’ permission, his testicles forcefully grabbed by a state trooper.

Facial recognition, drones

Cziment questioned whether troopers will engage in pursuits or use facial recognition tactics that aren’t subject to City Council review or drones that won’t be governed by the the New Orleans Police Department’s nascent policy.

She’s also wary of the lens that state troopers will bring to a famously diverse and tolerant city, considering that they haven’t undergone the New Orleans agency’s training on de-escalation and cultural sensitivity.

“Are you going to train your officers to believe everything is a threat, in which case you want to survive by any means?’ she asked. “Community is the greatest asset we have with crime investigation. When the community is treated as walking suspects, that will kill that relationship.”

Glade Bilby II, president of French Quarter Citizens, pointed to a patchwork of agencies that policed the French Quarter when Troop N was around. Along with city and state officers, Landrieu’s administration launched an ill-fated civilian patrol, while Bourbon Street businesses hired their own steady private security. The French Market Corp. also runs security in the neighborhood.

Ideally, Bilby said, the New Orleans Police Department would do it all. In the meantime, he hopes the new plans for LSP center on the French Quarter.

“We have 19 million tourists,” he said. “They don’t go to Gentilly.”

Staff writer Jillian Kramer contributed to this report.