Warren Riley! Stacy Head! In 3-D! On Ice!

Update: WDSU just caught up with Superindendent Riley and he appears to be meekly backing off. It makes his comments on the radio last week all the more slanderous.

Off-camera, Riley told WDSU that he doesn't believe the e-mail is a big deal, that he's never seen the message and he doesn't have proof that Head actually sent it.

Update II: Seriously, I cannot believe how pathetic this walk back is by Riley. Unbelievable. He should apologize to WBOK's listeners and to Councilwoman Head.

--

Warren Riley leveled some pretty serious and racially charged allegations in an interview with WBOK last week. I really wish WBOK archived its broadcasts. Thankfully, the T-P's Brendan McCarthy was tuned in.

The allegations about Head's e-mail came up when a radio station caller, who went by the name Malcolm, mentioned the alleged message.

The caller said: "I hear some of our council members are sending e-mails out -- one in particular, Ms. Head, sent an e-mail saying she hopes you fail and let's not approve your budget. But anyway, she's the failure in all of this anyway.

Riley responded: "You forgot the N-word that was in that e-mail, from what I understand."

"Well, yeah, you heard about it," the caller responded. "She said 'Let's make this Negro, not Negro, but she used that other one."

The caller then lambasted the media for ignoring the message. "The news (media) did not, nobody else put that out, nobody else interviewed, nobody made a big story about that. And if it was somebody of color that sat on the City Council who had that kind of behavior, would have been asked to step down."

Those who know Stacy Head personally have been quick to insist that this allegation is baseless and that such behavior would be unimaginable. But considering Stacy Head's history of off-color and, in a general sense, prejudiced language, Riley's allegation must at least be considered plausible.

Saying something that reflects ignorance, prejudice, or bias is different from saying something indisputably racist with malicious intent. Riley's accusations, if true, would be far more condemning of Head's character than her casually offensive observations in the Walmart checkout aisle.

If Head indeed used that epithet toward anyone, she would have to resign. She should not and cannot represent a population for which she has such an expressed, visceral hatred. The public pressure would be intense and well-deserved.

Luckily, we don't have to live in a world of 'what ifs.' Warren Riley claims Councilwoman Head used that particular slur in an e-mail. He should immediately produce the email. Regardless, news organizations should submit a public-records request to Head to obtain it.

Head's colleagues should hold immediate hearings to demand Riley produce the email, to censure Head if he can come through, or to call for Riley's ouster if he cannot.

If this email does not exist, Riley would be guilty of an extraordinarily insidious, divisive and manipulative slander. He knew that the forum he chose to air this allegation, WBOK, would not challenge him. He knew he was speaking to an audience predisposed - because of Head's past intransigence and WBOK's listener base - to believe a plausible, even if baseless, allegation of racism about the councilwoman.

And maybe he thought Head would prefer to ignore the story and minimize its media echo amid a tough reelection fight instead of throwing down the gauntlet to make him prove his charge.

Stacy Head should not and cannot simply ignore this story. Merely asserting that the allegations are totally baseless and false, as she did to the Times-Picayune, is not enough. Because of her salty language in the past, there is a special burden on her to substantively prove her innocence to the extent that she is able. When the e-mail controversy first began, Head took it upon herself to release a large set of emails to the public by publishing them for download on her website. Those emails have since been taken down. She owes it to herself and her supporters to more substantively address her views on race, language, and the allegations being leveled by Warren Riley, perhaps first by reopening her email outbox to additional public scrutiny.

As someone who has interacted with Stacy Head and parsed all of her emails released to date, I personally, have an extraordinarily hard time believing Riley's accusations.

This is different than a blind caller on talk radio throwing out an accusation. This is the Police Superintendent, one of the most important and powerful people in the city.

For someone of that stature to level this kind of accusation without prepared evidence is irresponsible, dangerous, and wrong.

It's not just manipulative.

Mr. Riley seems... a bit... delusional, and here's what I mean:

Riley said the recent release of a poll - showing that only 33 percent of citizens are satisfied with the NOPD - was timed to dissuade him from entering politics. The poll was unveiled by business leaders shortly before the political qualifying period. Riley also alleged The Times-Picayune chose that week to release several negative stories about him.

"There's a revolution going on, and we are missing it," he said.

Riley also criticized the slate of mayoral candidates and promoted his tenure as police chief.

"You know, I listen to the mayoral candidates," he said. "I run a bigger organization, and have had bigger budgets than any of these individuals. And I'm not knocking any of them. I'm just saying, I have had the ultimate challenge. The only person ... there are two people who have bigger challenges than I. And that's Mayor Nagin and President Obama."

Riley appears to be saying that he was all set to enter the mayor's race until that poll, which showed faith in the police force at an all-time low, was released.

Riley apparently put out feelers for a mayor's race over the summer before explicitly announcing in August that he would not seek that office, saying that he had "absolutely no interest."

So Riley is essentially saying that just weeks before the qualifying deadline, with no money raised, and with no campaign team assembled, he was considering swooping into the mayor's race. That is, until, a poll was strategically released to demonstrate his department's almost cartoonishly low approval ratings. Riley is intoning that he had a really great shot at raising money and gaining popular traction had it not been for that poll.

Think about how crazy that is.

Objectively speaking, Riley has presided over one of the most dysfunctional police forces in the country, to say nothing of his own conduct during his career on the force. The feds are looming over the NOPD for its unjustifiable pattern of police brutality, missing evidence, and who knows what else. Hasn't Riley been one of the most unpopular figures in local politics for over two years? Would people argue that the poll released in early December said something they didn't already really know?

If Riley had assembled his record of sloppy, ineffective catch-and-release, fire-when-ready police work during a Presidential administration that put any effort into exercising the powers of the Clinton administration's COPS bill, the NOPD might currently be in the control of a federal receiver right now because systemically discriminatory pattern and practice.

He's not just delusional and silly. He's not just calculating and manipulative.

He's desperate.

Riley's plans, given that this conspiracy of unpopularity dissuaded him from seeking the Mayor's office?

"I'm looking at a public venture ... with a couple people here in the city that I think would be profound and lucrative," he said. "I also am looking at another position that I will absolutely not talk about. Regardless, I am going to do well no matter what. As I stated, my future is bright. If I don't work another day in my life I'll be OK. I'm not just a police chief."

Bad Coroner: Port of Call New Orleans

There is a lot to say about this week's gripping series by Frontline, The Times-Picayune, and Pro-Publica, and I wish I had a few hours to go on at length. Unfortunately, I'll have to dart in and out.

If you haven't been keeping up, please get yourself started now.

I don't know exactly what's coming up in this series but I would like to briefly to discuss the race for coroner.

Though it had been assumed for a long time that the longtime incumbent coroner, Dr. Frank Minyard would retire at the end of his term, he has decided to run for reelection. At first, it appeared as though he would be unchallenged but an opponent did surface before the end of qualifying.


Dr. Dwight McKenna has entered the race.

Dr. McKenna was also once an employee of the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office, so he is not an inexperienced candidate. He and his wife, another doctor who was recently involved in a tragic and horrible car accident, are behind the McKenna Museum of African American Art and the New Orleans Tribune.

--

Minyard came under fire after Katrina for the slow pace at which his office was able to identify victims and for apparently refusing aid that would have bolstered his staff.

Minyard has been on my own radar since I began researching material for this unflattering profile of Police Superintendent Warren Riley. Minyard came up when I was reading about the death of Adolph Archie, who was beaten to death while in custody after he was arrested for the murder of a police officer. You can check out this scanned clipping of the AP story reporting Minyard's new story, this account in Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force pg. 33, or this one from a 1995 New York Times column by Bob Hebert.

He also was a major impediment to A.C. Thompson's exposure of violent racist vigilantism in Algiers Point after the levee failure. From an interview with Thompson:

The lawsuit brought by me and the Nation Institute's Investigative Fund also gobbled up many months. We sued Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard for the right to copy every single autopsy report tied to Hurricane Katrina. All we really wanted were the autopsies documenting shooting victims, but Minyard refused to give us those, saying he couldn't sort them out from all the other autopsies. So we wound up demanding everything, as we were allowed under Louisiana law. We won. And the coroner now owes the Investigative Fund some $10,000 in attorney fees, which he hasn't paid.

Dr. Minyard is 80 years old now. At some point or another, someone else is going to be leading the Coroner's office. I have a hard time thinking of another city that elects its coroners. Are their any? What are the advantages of having the coroner subject to the political process?

Update: Does Dr. Frank Minyard still live in New Orleans anymore?

Jumping in

I've been thinking through some things the last few days related to this discussion and the pursuit of justice for victims of unrepentant vigilantism during Hurricane Katrina.

After I suggested that some instances of abuse of power might be more easily prosecutable than others and wondered aloud whether or not some sort of truth commission deal might be appropriate for some of the cases, an anonymous commenter points out:

So the family of Emmett Everett, the black man killed by Doctors at Memorial hospital, only deserves an apology while the white cop who torched a black man deserves prison? The family of the black woman who died at the convention center because homeland security blocked ambulances deserves an apology while the police at Danzinger deserve jail?

This is moral relativism at its worse. If you killed someone under the color of law or in an official capacity as a medical care provider, you should pay the price.

We developed the Nurenberg acccords and International Court precisely to prevent people from using "special circumstances" as an excuse for murderous behavior.
Every human has an individual conscience and the history of human progress our of the ranks of primitive primates has been to get them to use it when mob mentality takes hold.

All true.

But earlier in the thread, the same (I think) Anonymous commenter points out:

Trust me, if these ever go to jury no white juror is going to hold the white defendants accountable. In their minds, blacks went wild and they share a collective guilt for the actions of a few, so the innocent ones deserve no sympathy.

So I guess I'm still not sure exactly what it is you do here.

If we have a moral standard for what justice should be in this case - i.e. appropriate criminal penalties for those that committed crimes during Katrina - but no practical means of enforcing the standard, how do you move forward?

Anon is right both about the plank you walk off when discussing moral relativism and about the low likelihood that a local jury would ever convict a DHS bureaucrat that blocked ambulances from the Convention Center or the Doctors at Memorial.

That's why I'm having a hard time resolving this.

Let's take the Memorial case.

I would applaud a criminal case being brought against Anna Pou. I think it is pretty damn clear that she killed Mr. Everett when he could have very easily made it through the evacuation.

But I highly doubt she'd be convicted. The trial would be highly polarizing, perhaps more so than the other cases, since I think people are naturally inclined to be sympathetic toward a medical professional and because of Ms. Pou's public exoneration tour.

So what kind of justice would be handed down from that kind of circus?

I'm curious to engage in a frank discussion about this. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of my readers are in agreement that these cases should be pursued. But I wonder to what extent impediments to justice exist and whether those impediments limit the ability of our traditional system to actually deliver. Are there practicalities to consider?

--

Moving sideways...

I'm at least comforted by the knowledge the Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States. The administration is serious about empowering the Civil Rights Division to do what it is supposed to do. It's not a coincidence that the feds are now actively investigating some of these post Katrina horror stories to see what they might be able to successfully prosecute.

I am hoping Holder will utilize the powers established under the Clinton administration for the Civil Rights Division to take over police departments characterized by rampant civil rights violations. Forces with a "pattern or practice" of civil rights abuse can be effectively taken over using consent decrees. Cities are threatened with civil rights lawsuits unless they agree to a federal police monitor to implement sweeping reforms. Holder came to oversee the Civil Rights Division as Deputy Attorney General just as it began pursuing consent decrees against police departments in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.

New Orleans was once a candidate for a consent decree from the Department of Justice. This outside pressure played a role in Marc Morial's decision to hire Richard Pennington, who presided over a pretty damn successful reform of the NOPD. Some background here.

This is something that people should pressure our Mayoral candidates about. Would they sign a consent decree to bring in federal oversight of the NOPD or not and why?

DA Cannizzaro on truth serum

Via AZ

You definitely gotta check this out.

It's video of our District Attorney getting all candid in an official capacity. He calls out the NOPD and his own office, tells the truth about how effed up our criminal justice system is right now.

Secondary Brawlout

Another NOPD officer fired for involvement in Beach Corner fight.

Interestingly enough, though Officer Keller was thought to have initiated the argument that lead to the incident, he was never among those disciplined or suspended.

More than 40 police officers were interviewed as part of the administrative investigation. Keller appeared to have only a minor role in the incident, according to the NOPD's own report. It is not alleged that he threw any punches or played any direct part in the arrest of the RTA employees.

Mr. Keller, for what it's worth, might be the only officer involved in this incident NOT represented by Frank DeSalvo.

A city incapable of policing its own police

Given this and this (and so many more paper cut and mortal wound examples), is it yet the conventional wisdom that our NOPD has regressed to the low levels of public confidence and effectiveness that nearly brought about a consent decree receivership with the Department of Justice in the mid-1990's?

Is discourse going to be such that a mayoral campaign promise of a "national search" for a new police chief will be code for a recognition of the panacea of problems with the incumbent NOPD leadership? Or are candidates going to be challenged to make a more precise diagnosis?

Better Late Than Never

Justice creeping in on NOPD for Katrina brutality?

Link...

Minyard's office next?

Dude!

Rumor has it that this week there will be an announcement that simple marijuana possession cases will no longer be pursued in criminal court.

Update: It would have to be a decision from the DA. Chief Riley would still have the discretion to make arrests unless he volunteered to alter police policy to award summons. Nonetheless, moving these frivolous possession cases into the municipal courts is a great first step if in fact this pans out.

The bar fight and the blurry blue line

Cliff wrote last week that the the NOPD has an image problem, linking to a few of the latest embarrassments.

I'd argue that the NOPD has a reality problem.

One example Cliff discussed was the fight at the Beach Corner bar.

Now, stories like this could trigger a few uncomfortable discussions about race and the police department. It could cause an officer or two to get fired or indicted. If everything in these stories is true then I think that's a good thing. At the least all of the officers involved in that bar fight should be terminated. If they can get away with lying and planting guns on innocent people then I don’t have any confidence in their capabilities to catch the guilty. If you want to eliminate the race card and conspiracy theories out of local government then you have to correct the things that make it so believable.

Cliff touches on it but let's really flesh out what's gone on here.

--

1. In February, 2008, there was a fight at the Beach Corner Lounge. Lamont Williams of the RTA was arrested on weapons charges. Opposing accounts of the evening emerged a few weeks later after Williams and his coworkers retained the services of an attorney and filed a complaint.

The initial police report, compiled by the responding officers, describes the incident in detail -- and includes two starkly conflicting versions.

In one version -- told by [Hans] Ganthier, [Jason] Samuel and a 29-year-old Kenner resident -- the men disarmed Williams, taking a gun from him.

Both Ganthier and Samuel said a gun had been taken from Williams. The Kenner resident, Donald McMyne, agreed. McMyne could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

According to the report, the three men gave the following account:

McMyne said he was sitting at the bar and heard there was a disturbance in the men's restroom. As Lamont Williams left the restroom and walked toward the front door, McMyne was sitting on a barstool and said he told Williams to "just relax and calm down." While walking toward the front door, Williams "lifted the front of his shirt exposing a dark-colored handgun," McMyne told police.

Williams left the lounge and McMyne followed him out. Next, McMyne said, he tackled Williams from behind, and they struggled. The two off-duty officers joined in and assisted in removing the handgun from Williams, McMyne said.

Williams and his RTA coworkers told a different story.

Hagan, who is black, said he left three co-workers to use the restroom. While waiting in line, a white man walked in and skipped the line. Hagan told the line-skipper that he was next in line, and the man responded: "Oh, you getting (expletive) cocky with me?"

Hagan advised the man to "just go ahead" and left the restroom and told his co-workers they should leave. While walking out, Hagan said someone whistled and "a large group of unknown white males" approached him and his co-workers. The co-workers split up.

The men followed Hagan, Damon Tobias, 27, Williams and Kisa Holmes, 31, outside the bar and on Canal Street. After getting into his car, Hagan said, he told the group of men following him, and a woman who had joined them, that he had a gun and "if I have to use it to defend myself I will."

At that point, the unidentified woman swore at him, reached into the glove compartment of his truck and removed the handgun. Hagan said the woman then put him into "some type of arm hold" and detained him. The woman eventually released him and he went to the aid of his colleague who was being attacked.

Tobias told police he was attacked by a group of men who followed him from the lounge. A third colleague, Holmes, corroborated her colleagues' version and said she saw the group attack them from afar. She had fled from the scene. The group said they believed their alleged attackers were off-duty officers, the report said.

The NOPD opened an investigation upon the citizen complaint. Warren Riley told WWLTV there would be accountability.

"There will be no cover-up. There will be hiding no information. If these officers were wrong, they will suffer the consequences of their actions."

Three officers were reassigned from the special operations unit pending the outcome of the investigation including Sergeant Hans Ganthier, and Officers Jason Samuel and Joey* Lapene.

*For some reason earlier media accounts refer to "Joey" Lapene whereas later ones refer to him as "David" Lapene. He's just one person. I will call him David.

2. In February of 2009, Mr. Lamont sues the NOPD, the city, and the three officers.

The lawsuit alleges that several off-duty police officers used excessive force and falsely arrested Lamont Williams, 36, in an apparent dispute between Regional Transit Authority employees and off-duty police officers last year.

A criminal inquiry was opened, but a spokeswoman for District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said Friday that the district attorney believes the incident is a civil matter. She declined to comment further.

The NOPD recently finished its own administrative investigation and is holding disciplinary hearings for the officers, NOPD spokesman Bob Young said. Once those hearings are completed, the police superintendent will have the final say on whether penalties will be handed down to the officers.

3. In late April of 2009, Officer David Lapene is fired from the NOPD for his role in the fight.

Officer David Lapene was dismissed after a hearing and a "thorough review of the evidence," according to a department news release. He was found to have broken four regulations of the department.

Lapene violated regulations governing moral conduct, adherence to the law, truthfulness and professional conduct, the NOPD news release said.

Another officer, Jennifer Payne, was suspended without pay for 80 days as a result of the same investigation, NOPD spokesman Bob Young said Thursday night.

Payne was the woman accused of seizing Mr. Hagan's handgun in the initial report.

*Note: Jennifer Payne is sometimes referred to as Jennifer Samuel. She is married to officer Jason Samuel, who was also investigated as part of the bar incident.

4. Between May and June of 2009, David Lapene is hired by DA Leon Cannizzaro before subsequently resigning.

Cannizzaro has defended Lapene's hiring to WDSU. He said Lapene's case was reviewed by the two previous interim district attorneys, and both times there were no charges filed. After looking at the file, Cannizzaro said agrees with that decision.

Prior to Lapene's resignation, it was reported that the District Attorney's daughter, Laura Cannizzaro was present at the bar during the incident in 2008.

5. In July, 2009 the investigation by Public Integrity Bureau into the incident at the Beach Corner leaks to the public.

An internal report from the New Orleans Police Department Thursday night suggested that several officers lied about what happened at the Beach Corner Bar and Grill in February 2008.

--

Another part of the internal report states that a civilian man named Donald McMyne was also part of the investigation. He told investigators that he never saw the fight, but later an officer told him what happened. McMyne stated that that officer asked him to lie.

Also, Officer Jennifer Samuel changed her story several times, according to the report. The report states that Samuel removed Kennis Hagan's personal gun from his parked car, and the remaining officers conspired to falsely arrest Williams for possession of Hagan's firearm. They then convinced the civilian to participate in the conspiracy. The civilian has since admitted to the conspiracy, which was documented in an official NOPD arrest report.Investigators also noted that Officer David Lapene admitted that he exited the bar right behind Damon Tobias. He admitted to walking behind Tobias when he claimed an unknown person swung over his shoulder and punched Tobias in the face. He repeatedly denied punching Tobias, even though Kisa Holmes identified him at the scene as the person who punched Tobias.

6. Just last week, PANO sued the Public Integrity Bureau and the Officer who filed the investigation for how the case was handled - though it's not clear to me on what grounds other than... well, revenge.

The attorney for the accused officers said the police department's investigation is flawed and that Sgt. Darryl Watson, who conducted the investigation, may have broken the law.

"He filed a false police report," the attorney said. "They have been disseminating it. There have been repercussions to police officers because of it and now it's time for him to eat his words and we are going to feed it to him."

--

The PID report is available at NOLA.com.

I downloaded and read the report.

The details are quite striking, particularly when the civilian witness, Donald McMyne, admits he was coached by officers to fabricate his entire story about recognizing the alleged bathroom dispute, seeing a gun on Mr Lamont, and tackling him from behind. Apparently none of that actually happened.

---

There are so many burning questions here...

For the NOPD, remember Riley's words:

"There will be no cover-up. There will be hiding no information. If these officers were wrong, they will suffer the consequences of their actions."

1. Since it is clear that this incident involved several officers from the Special Operations Division and a transparent attempt to cover up what actually transpired, why has only one officer, David Lapene, been fired?

2. Did the firing of Lapene and suspension of Samuels represent attempts to find fall guys for an incident that fingers Riley's elite unit? Is there a pattern of special treatment for SWAT and Special Ops units emerging?

3. Given how shockingly casual these elite NOPD officers were about planting evidence, coaching false witnesses, and providing false accounts to their own investigators, what is to prevent the public from simply assuming that this stuff occurs rather regularly?

-

For the DA, refer to the statement from Mr. Cannizzaro's office:

A criminal inquiry was opened, but a spokeswoman for District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said Friday that the district attorney believes the incident is a civil matter. She declined to comment further.

4. Was Mr. Cannizzaro aware of the PID report when he hired Mr. Lapene?

5. If not, is the DA reconsidering the prospect of criminal prosecution?

6. Did you discuss the incident at the bar with your daughter and aspirant assistant DA, Laura Cannizzaro?

7. Why did Ms. Cannizzaro refuse to answer questions when she was approached by Public Integrity Division investigators the night of the incident?

8. What was her role in the hiring of Lapene?

--

More later.

Public Safety, Crime, the NOPD, and the 2010 Mayoral Circus

That's the theme for the next weekish here at WCBF.

This is an open thread as I work to prepare some stories and analysis to publish at my convenience.

Is crime a problem by itself or a symptom of other problems?

What should the next Mayor do in an ideal world and to what extent do real world political constraints limit those options?

Links Update:

1. NOPD's misleading rape stats
2. Investigations into racist vigilante killings during Katrina moving forward?
3. NOPD bar fight cover up

Links Update 2:

4. Audit finds $200,000 missing from NOPD evidence room

Checkered Past Comes Full Circle

Maybe you saw this in the paper on Friday:

The City of New Orleans must release to The Times-Picayune police department records of 10 officers, including Superintendent Warren Riley, related to any misconduct investigations or complaints, a judge ruled this morning.

"They're entitled to these records," Civil District Court Judge Robin Giarrusso said after a hearing in her courtroom. "Public records are public records are public records, and the citizens of this city have a right to know what's in them."

Yes, the public needs to know that it can trust the public integrity bureau. Given the NOPD's horrendous relationship with the public at present and by historic reputation, one would think that if the NOPD had nothing to hide, they'd be anxious to open up to the media about how they do business.

But as the article continues, we learn that it's not just the media that's been spurned by NOPD record keepers:

NOPD advocate groups tried to block another person's request for 16 decades' worth of police complaint records, suing the city and arguing in court Friday that the officers are entitled to a "right to privacy" that goes back to the framing of the U.S. Constitution. Their attorneys suggested at the hearing that they would appeal Giarrusso's ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal.

The newspaper intervened in an effort to allow the city to answer McCarthy's request.

Other parties, including the Orleans Parish Public Defenders, were also asking for the NOPD Public Integrity Bureau records. One woman had asked the city for every Public Integrity Bureau file dating to 1992.

So it doesn't seem to be Riley's reactionary stance to the "Times Pick-on-you," it's actually long standing NOPD policy. What might it be specifically about the public integrity bureau?

Again, the T-P's Gwen Filosa provides some historical context:

In 1954, the New Orleans police department created an "internal affairs" division, Mince said, but in 1995 then-Police Superintendent Richard Pennington abolished it.

"He said, 'We're going to have a public integrity bureau," she said. "He recognized the need to restore public trust in the New Orleans Police Department."

Riley in 2002 was part of a task force charged by Mayor Marc Morial to review law enforcement's performance, Mince added. The task force members agreed that "an educated and informed citizenry" was key to following the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

But there is A LOT more to it than what was included in yesterday's paper.

You have to remember what precipitated Pennington's move, or really what even brought Pennington into town in the first place. A few months ago, I happened to be digging into a little bit of NOPD history and became very much fixated on what was going on in the early '90's. Certainly these are not good times at the NOPD but what was going on before Pennington joined the force was mind-boggling. We're talking about some Wild West bullsh!t going on - from the rank and file all the way up to the top of the force.

Using Lexis-Nexis, I came across a 60 Minutes transcript from the fall of 1994 that gets at some of what was going on at the time. At that time, Joseph Orticke was police superintendent and the Department of Justice had just named the NOPD worst in the nation for police brutality. Without excerpting large segments of that transcript, Mike Wallace profiled several visionary crime fighters who deserve some description:

• Former NOPD officer Michael Thames was imprisoned for skimming from illegal gambling, drug, and prostitution rackets to the tune of $100,000 per year. When asked about the Rodney King beating in L.A., Thames responded that he didn't know what the big deal was because that was "kiddie-land" compared to New Orleans.
• Dr. Frank Minyard, New Orleans coroner (to this day - more on him some other time) defended his office against charges that it fudged an autopsy of Adolph Archie who wounded after killing a cop only to be intercepted by a mob of police officers on the steps of Charity Hospital, taken to a police station, and beaten to death while in custody.
• Antoine Saacks was a 28 year veteran of the force and the NOPD's second-in-command under Orticke before getting fired a week before 60 Minutes got to town. On a salary of $50,000 per year, Saacks boasted millions of dollars in assets related to number of schemes including a vice-squad extortion racket in the French Quarter, exacting 'fees' for permitting officers to moonlight as private security in the film industry, and by setting up an operation to capitalize on video poker by connecting Vegas firms to a mafia-connected Bourbon St. landlord named Frank Caracci.

In 1994, the Clinton Administration granted the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice new powers to take over troubled local police forces with poor track records on civil liberties, brutality, and racism. Only a handful of police forces were ever taken over but a certain degree of the law's effectiveness is derived from police policy adjustments made under threat of takeover. Given some of the issues illuminated above, certainly the NOPD was an early candidate for receivership takeover. Mayor Morial's decision to search outside the city for a new police chief in '94 resulted partially from this downward pressure out of Washington D.C. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the man he picked, Richard Pennington, was plucked from D.C.'s force.

After police pay was frozen for some time in 1982, starting salaries for NOPD officers was still so low when Pennington came in that they had to be doubled. Internal affairs was liquidated and the officers were dispersed. Pennington then created the public integrity bureau, moved it outside of precinct HQ and added FBI agents to its staff.

Chief Pennington's adjustments weren't a cure all by any stretch, as issues with brutality and corruption continued to plague the force to the point that the Department of Justice opened up an official investigation into New Orleans in 1996 to monitor the reform efforts.

The general consensus of the city seems to be that the Pennington era of the NOPD was a success. Significant progressive reforms were instituted that made a pretty noticeable dent in the city's crime stats and in public perception of safety.

-

It is crucial to understand the context behind the decision to scrap internal affairs for the public integrity bureau.

Though those changes may have come regardless, the most direct catalyst was the murder of Kim Groves, which occurred just six hours after Pennington was sworn in.

Groves was murdered as a result of an execution order from NOPD Officer Len Davis, who was tipped off from within internal affairs after Groves filed a report that she had witnessed Davis senselessly beating a teen aged suspect.

At the time Davis ordered Groves' death, he was also one target in a wide-ranging federal drug investigation. Officer Davis was apparently one of at least 15-20 officers helping to guard cocaine warehouses run by undercover federal agents. Groves' killing ultimately short-circuited the drug case, as only ten officers ended up being charged. (At least according to the July 13, 1996 Washington Post article that helped me guide the narrative of this case.)

-

So let's get back to Superintendent Warren Riley's defensive protection of records related to internal affairs and the Public Integrity Bureau. What was Warren Riley doing back in the early '90s?

Well, he was at Internal Affairs, assigned there in 1991 after several years between the maligned Narcotics and Vice squads.

In late 1997, Riley was suspended for three days without pay after an investigation of an incident that occurred in the months after the Groves killing and two weeks before he had been reassigned out of the new public integrity division that Pennington was creating.

Riley was on duty on February 17th, 1995, when Sharon Robinson came forward to report that she feared for her life because she'd just ended things with her then-boyfriend, NOPD Officer Victor Gant who had a long history of physically abusing her and had repeatedly threatened to kill her in the event that she left him.

Officer Riley did not file a report or open an investigation.

Months later, on April 27th, 1995, after Riley had been transferred to the 6th District, Officer Gant approached Riley to discuss Robinson's coming forward to Riley, for which she had apparently confessed. Gant told Riley that the couple's issues had been resolved.

Sharon Robinson's body was found drowned in a swamp days later.

Here's a 1995 article from UK Independent that profiled Officer Victor Gant after he was named a suspect:

The target of the hunt is a serial killer who, investigators believe, has struck at least 24 times. The FBI think that Gant may be the killer but they don't have enough evidence for an arrest. So Gant sits at his desk, suspended from patrol duty. If you have his telephone number, you can call him and hear his Louisiana drawl: "I can't really discuss the case, you'll have to talk with my lawyer."

Gant became a suspect after Karen Ivester was found strangled. Her body was dumped in the swamp about half a mile from Interstate 55, just 30 minutes from the French Quarter of New Orleans. As local police combed the scene they found a second corpse, another young woman. Sharon Robinson had been drowned. She was still dressed in her work clothes, a uniform from the Harrah's Casino in New Orleans. Before death, her head had been shaved. In life, Robinson and Ivester had been best friends.

Police inquiries at the casino revealed that Robinson had left work on 29 April this year at 3am accompanied by Gant, a 33-year-old officer who was once her boyfriend. The New Orleans Police Department immediately named Gant as a suspect. Then the FBI announced that the man who killed Robinson and Ivester had also claimed 22 other victims.

Twenty-one of the killer's victims had ties to prostitution, Ivester included. Nineteen were known prostitutes, including one man. There were two other male victims and there is evidence to suggest they were also prostitutes. According to NOPD sources, each body carried some distinctive marks that matched through all 24 deaths.

--

Gant used to patrol in Treme and Algiers. Several residents say a group of New Orleans police officers has operated a string of prostitutes in the area for years. Some say they've seen brutal beatings and threats of murder and a few have claimed Gant was an associate of one suspect group which allegedly ruled through intimidation.

On a recent Friday night the bars along Treme's Claibourne Avenue were busy and outside each one there was a small clutch of women working the street. Many are scared, some are aggressive and few were willing to speak. When they do, they insist on anonymity.

"The police and the politicians don't really care about us," said one. "It took over a dozen deaths before those motherfuckers lifted a finger to find the killer. I knew two of the three girls who died but I wouldn't tell the police about it. I'd be the next one dead if I did." The woman then went further. "I saw the girl called Peach just a couple of days before she was murdered. The thing is, some of the cops were running the girls around here, they were pimping. Some people say Peach got out of line."

"Peach" was the name used by Karen Ivester. According to FBI investigators, Gant had told some acquaintances that he disliked Karen Ivester because she had persuaded her friend not to join her in prostitution. Local papers report that the Treme prostitutes have been victims of an intimidation campaign by a group of rogue police officers.

Upon the discovery of Robinson's body, Officer Riley wrote a letter to Major Loicano at the Public Integrity Bureau, telling him of Robinson's visit the previous February.

It was Major Loicano who ultimately reported Riley's violation, as we can see from the Major's testimony at Riley's appeal of the suspension to the Civil Service Commission in 1998:

---

Now to bring it all back, lets get back to Filosa's article:

At issue was a request by newspaper reporter Brendan McCarthy to view any Public Integrity Bureau records kept by the New Orleans Police Department on Riley, along with his top three officers and the officers involved in the Jan. 1 fatal shooting of 22-year-old Adolph Grimes.

Certainly, we can understand how it is in the interests of Superintendent Riley and PANO (Police Association of New Orleans) to deny public records requests related to Internal Affairs and the Public Integrity Bureau. And we can also understand how it's in Superintendent Riley's interests to deny the public the right to inspect his own complaint records.

But I think it will be very interesting to examine common threads possibly bind all ten officers in McCarthy's request together. How many of Riley's top Lieutenants came from the old internal affairs outfit of the early '90s? What about from narcotics and vice of the '80s?

The most disturbing thing to think about is how the NOPD in total seems to have gone full circle back to the old pre-Pennington days. How many brutality cases have we heard about since Katrina? How many arrests of uniformed officers? And how much never sees the light of day?

So it goes

NOPD needlessly brutalizes another submissive suspect.

Nossiter!

The Gamblog has just pointed out that the New York Times has been especially attentive to New Orleans over the past few days. Kevin Allman links this article by Adam Nossiter about day laborers as victims of crime.

I'm glad he did because the article sucks. I see it as an example of Mr. Nossiter's often incendiary and anecdotal perspective on race in New Orleans.

But on the street, these laborers are known as “walking A.T.M.’s.”

Their pockets stuffed with bills, the laborers are vulnerable because of language problems and their status as illegal immigrants. And as Hispanics have become the prey of choice in crumbling neighborhoods here in one of America’s most crime-ridden cities, racial friction between the newcomers and longtime black residents has moved close to the surface.

-

Many bluntly assigned a racial component, saying that it was “los morenos” — their colloquial term for blacks — who were after them. “When we are leaving here after work, we have to go on foot,” Mr. Billado said, speaking through an interpreter. “The blacks are waiting for us. They’ll beat you up. They’ll take your money.”

I don't want to dismiss the tragedy that is the victimization of hardworking New Orleans residents and the plight of undocumented workers in general. Nor do I want to dismiss the notion that there is tension between Latino and African American communities.

But Nossiter seems to cherry-pick quotes and structures his narrative to suit the needs of a predetermined meme - that racial tension has resulted in African Americans preying upon Hispanics.

The anecdotal quotes from victims of crime are given the lede but the causal factors - the high rate of crime generally, African American joblessness and underemployment, the overall vulnerability of undocumented workers, and the fact that African Americans are so often victims of crime themselves - are buried on page 2 or left out entirely.

Furthermore, this article could have been written at any point over the last three years and the issue of the vulnerability of immigrant laborers to robbery in New Orleans has been covered by local and national media.

Nossiter does not break a new item anywhere in the article so I question the choice of subject.

If he wanted to take the pulse of the city, he might want to examine the backlash bubbling up against the NOPD that has been separately emanating from black, white, and brown quarters.

He includes a line about this:

The police, the men said, either ignore their calls, admonish them for being in the country illegally or arrive too late at a crime scene to do any good.

But what could have been useful in another context becomes a throwaway within this article in particular.

-

Did anybody else get a little queasy reading this Nossiter piece? Or am I being a cherry-picker too?

Fear of retaliation

Essential City Business story about a jerk cop and a friend of mine who knows his rights.

Wexler said his first impulse was to file a complaint with the NOPD’s Public Integrity Bureau, but he doubted the independence and effectiveness of the unit. If the police department can’t be trusted to treat citizens with respect, how can it be trusted to investigate allegations of abuse against its own officers, Wexler said.

Even his attorney, Sam Dalton, tried to discourage him from filing a report.

“I’ve seen what happens when people bring complaints,” Dalton said. “The police try to intimidate them from continuing their protests. It’s a very uncomfortable situation. One thing I know is that this officer won’t be punished.”

-

A woman who works in the area at the time of the incident verified Wexler’s account to CityBusiness but refused to provide her name for fear of police retaliation.

Common Sense

Ethan's crime-fighting op-ed at the Gambit.

Highly recommended, to second adrastos.

Police accused in killing accused of lots of other stuff

T-P:

The record of Sgt. Daniel Scanlan, a ranking member of the nine-person unit involved in the shooting, has become a flash point in the wake of the killing. Some community leaders have questioned police tactics -- particularly the aggressive, plainclothes units like the one Scanlan helped lead -- and have called for a thorough vetting of each officer involved.

Police records show that only one of the dozens of complaints lodged against Scanlan has been sustained by New Orleans Police Department internal investigators, and that ruling was overturned on appeal by the Civil Service Commission.

--

But here's the real kicker, from PANO:

Capt. Michael Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, said the officers involved in the shooting have solid records. He drew a comparison between the Grimes case and another recent high-profile shooting, that of French Quarter resident Wendy Byrne, who was killed in a confrontation with three robbers. Quarter residents, Glasser said, want a strong police presence, with officers stopping, frisking and questioning people.

"You have thugs running around with guns robbing people, " he said. "Yet, just a few blocks away, cops are criticized for stopping a guy with . . . guns in his car and no real reason to have them."

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? "COPS ARE CRITICIZED FOR STOPPING A GUY?"

Officer Glasser, please get real. I think people's criticism derives from the strong possibility that these cops may have MURDERED a guy. Slight difference, no?

That guy was named Adolph Grimes III. He had no criminal record, was engaged to be married, and had a permit to carry a weapon. He was in town to visit family for the New Year.

Police shot him nine times in the back, half a block from his grandmother's house.

Hours earlier those same officers terrorized the Crutchfield family with guns and tasers.

Officer Glasser has every right to do his job and defend his fellow officers, but he can do so without denigrating the victim or insulting his grieving family. Show some class.

Asshole Cops Need Jail Time

Look at this bs!

The cops accused of murdering Adolph Grimes were the same cops that brutalized the Crutchfield family earlier that night.

--

I hear NOPD horror story after NOPD horror story living in this city. I hate it. Enough is enough.

Meeting in my mind

NOPD broken all over this city. Looks increasingly as though officers murdered this young man after which the administration waged a PR campaign to destroy the victim's reputation.

Disgusting conduct.

In Oakland, young man named Oscar Grant was murdered by a police officer on the same day as Mr. Adolph Grimes and there were days of tense and sometimes destructive protests.

In other local state brutality news, litigation against the city for Gitmo-like conditions at a juvenile detention facility has expanded into a much larger class-action suit.

You can leave children in solitary confinement for weeks at at time.

That's torture.

But this kind of stuff is all in a day's news in this city with this city's criminally broken justice system.

Mostly Crimey with Crime Expected Later

That was the weekend forecast and it was unfortunately accurate.

It is ubiquitous. It is in every neighborhood in this city, it affects every group of people in this city.

On Friday night, I was sitting on the stoop of a friend's house in the LGD and heard that morning's double shooting on the 700 block of Ninth.

On Saturday, I went to Wendy Byrne's memorial second line parade.

Today, Sunday, I learned that my old landlady was nearly beaten to death by her own son.

The Times-Picayune was chock full of long pieces detailing the many ways crime hurts our communities.

From Laura Maggi, Brian Thevenot, and Brendan McCarthy, on getting away with it:

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said the daylight killings speak to a pervasive lack of respect for the justice system.

"They are not concerned about the consequences," he said. "They are not concerned about who might be watching."

That attitude stems from a grim reality: Most killers here do get away with it.

So far, the New Orleans Police Department has made arrests in 59 of the murder cases in 2008, or 33 percent of the total. Prosecutors have accepted 32 of those cases, refused 11 for insufficient evidence and are considering whether to pursue the remainder. None of the cases has yet been tried.

Even if convictions are secured in every case accepted so far -- highly unlikely -- that would mean the city would punish just one in five killers. Police could secure more evidence and make more arrests at any time, but homicide cases generally do not age well, becoming tougher to solve with every day that goes by.

From Keith Spera, on front doorstep gunfire:

Until now, my wife and I have chosen to remain in the neighborhood and accept whatever risk that entails. But what of our responsibility to our child?

Does it make sense to raise her in a neighborhood, or a city, where killing is routine?

From Brian Thevenot, an artist asks the most important question:

"To me, I'm making American art; to a lot of folks, I'm making black art," he said. "It's the same with the murder problem -- people see it as a black issue. ... How can we get people to see that we live in one world?"

I leave that question for last because I think it helps give us a framework for evaluating WWL's Sunday panel on crime, featuring Samara Poche of the Lower Quarter Crime Watch, Mike Moffit of the Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents & Associates, and Thom Khaler of NO Crimeline.

They got some things right and some things so very very wrong.

Perhaps the most glaring issue wasn't the fault of the panel at all, it was the panel itself. Limiting a discussion about crime in New Orleans to the French Quarter perpetuates the same kind of provincialism that has always stopped us from getting at the big picture. That the French Quarter has experienced a rash of high profile violent crimes recently shouldn't be put to the side, but it is a constant source of frustration throughout the city that panels aren't organized on WWL when young men are slain in the 7th ward. That crime seems to get be on the radar only when tourist-oriented businesses are threatened is insulting. And to hear the crime issue couched in these terms during the panel was bothersome.

The panelists were on the money about some really important things. The issues with the NOPD start at the top with Police Superintendent Warren Riley. So long as he continues to poorly manage his force, there will be no change. The panelists seemed to understand that the issue is not money or manpower. New Orleans has more cops per capita than most cities in the US and it's almost impossible for us to devote a greater percentage of our city budget to police equipment than we already do. They also pointed out that the typical Warren Riley PR move in during a crime wave, sending out officers on more vehicle patrols, will not do. Foot patrols force officers to interact with residents, to learn names and faces, and helps foster trust while increasing the sense of safety.

But by and large, things got sticky when the panelists were asked to prescribe medicine. Panelists seemed to think that one of the problems was that the NOPD was not making the quality of life arrests it needs to make, that it was not enforcing petty crimes and this was leading to big crimes. One panelist seemed to think that the NOPD had gotten away from the strategy of racially profiling potential criminals, following young men who wear hoodies and then frisking them if they spit or jaywalk or the moment they have a millimeter of probable cause.

This is most definitely the wrong approach. In fact, the major problem with the NOPD right now is that they're using up all of their resources making catch-and-release arrests for drug possession and traffic-related bench warrants. If anything, the NOPD is arresting too many people. New Orleans and Jefferson Parish arrest more people than anywhere else in the country. We prosecute more nonviolent crimes than anywhere else in the country. This wastes resources and is the biggest reason why we don't focus money on punishing violent crime or on preventing crime in the first place. And certainly encouraging more racial profiling, aside from being an offensive suggestion, is only going to exacerbate some of the other fundamental issues hurting the NOPD: public mistrust and police violence.

In fact, experts have already identified many of the major issues facing the NOPD. The NOPD itself ordered an audit by BGI in 2007. But after BGI identified several systemic failures and prescribed a blueprint toward the superior community policing model, the NOPD suppressed the report for months. To this day, Warren Riley has failed to substantively institute the suggested reforms.

At the end of the segment, Thom Kahler suggests that business leaders may be working behind the scenes to remove Riley, like they did for former DA Eddie Jordan. I'm not comfortable with this if we're not ready to be honest, a. that we can't have a shadow government of business associates determining when and if our ineffective leaders stand down and how much to pay them to do so, and b. that removing the police chief will not reduce our crime rate unless we're also able to get real about the actual problems our police department has.

NOPD Hiding Fund

I missed this from earlier in the week.

Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman helps administer a state fund, the Louisiana Crime Victims Reparations Board, which helps families pay for funeral and hospital expenses. But the fund hasn't been making very many payouts, which is surprising considering that New Orleans has the highest murder rate in the industrialized world.

Gusman's office submitted 203 applications to the state board last year and 150 in 2007, resulting in a total of $330,000 delivered to victims of crime in Orleans Parish. The parish's convicts have kicked in $86,000 to the fund during the same time period, Gusman said during a City Hall meeting of the council's Criminal Justice Committee.

"That (payout) figure should be so much higher and it's not," said Capt. Mechelle Delahoussaye, who orchestrates the crime victims' reparations fund for the sheriff's office. "It looks great on paper, but that's in the year and a half in Orleans Parish. We're not running out of money."

Victims' rights advocates, including David Kent of Victims and Citizens Against Crime Inc. said NOPD officers aren't routinely handing out information about the assistance program.

-

Victims don't always get an item number from responding police officers, let alone the brochure about the compensation fund, said civil rights attorney Mary Howell.

"This (informing victims) needed to be done yesterday," Howell said. "I'm sick of talking to people who don't know about it. This is not complicated. If you get into a car accident, you get an item number. But you don't get that slip of paper when your child is murdered."

NOPD Detective Latina Thomas interjected, "Every victim in any crime receives an item number. That's part of our procedure."

"It's not happening," Howell responded, adding that police are by law supposed to notify victims of the fund.

So in other words, the fund isn't being tapped because the police aren't informing the families of victims about their eligibility.

Why don't we look at how this ridiculousness hurts our community with a real life example?

Everyone remembers the tragic murder of Ja'Shawn Powell, an innocent 2-year-old child killed by his absent father around the New Year. This community remains devastated by the event but rallied in support of the victim's family, establishing a memorial fund on their behalf.

It was supported far and wide. There was a vigil, there was a second line.

The memorial fund was established to help defray funeral costs for the family, which is precisely the function of the Louisiana Crime Victims Reparations Board's budget.

The money that should have gone to help pay for little Ja'Shawn's funeral continues to languish in a bank account while the citizens had to scramble for loose change from their couch cushions to help - all because the NOPD can't get it together to hand out brochures to the families of victims.

It is NOPD policy to inform families about the fund but apparently NOPD officers aren't doing that. So is it actually NOPD policy?

Why would Warren Riley not want to take advantage of a the Sheriff's program? It's not like there's any extra paperwork on the NOPD's end. Could it be residual resentment from Gusman's electoral victory over Riley in 2004?