Stupid Stuff at NOPD

Some of these things are beyond stupid and were the cause of many officers leaving for other, lower paying law enforcement jobs. I’ll mix it all in here and let you decide what burns your ass more.

Due, in part, to the consent decree, there are many things we used to do which were not illegal but are, nonetheless, not permitted. The consent decree discussions began in 2010 and in 2013 it was signed and in effect. The VERY basic explanation is Mayor Mitch Landrieu invited the federal government to establish a legal relationship where both sides “consent” to certain things which is put into a document, the “decree”. It ended up as the largest consent decree in number of paragraphs ever imposed upon any law enforcement entity. It was estimated to last six years with a 2-year self-monitoring period following. We are still under the decree eleven years later (in 2024) with no end in sight. In fact, they say we are backsliding.

Stopping Vehicles

We can no longer use stop sticks. This is a device you throw in front of a fleeing car which slowly lets out the air from the tires.

We cannot chase cars for any traffic violation including speeding, running red lights, driving the wrong way on a one-way street… none of it. If we put our overhead lights on, the car camera begins recording as does the officer’s body worn camera. If the traffic offender proceeds more than 2 blocks without pulling over, the officer is REQUIRED to pull over and put the vehicle in park. I am totally not kidding.

The same goes for stolen cars. Absolutely cannot chase them for any reason.

If the vehicle was taken in a carjacking, we can chase it only if the officer can reasonably articulate that the driver is likely the one who took the car at gunpoint versus someone the robber handed the vehicle off to. Time elapsed since the incident plays a big role here.

If we do chase a car, we cannot send more than 2 cars after it. We cannot box it in or block its path in any way. We cannot parallel the chase on the next street. We cannot PIT (Pursuit Intervention Technique) the vehicle, something you see in many videos involving police chases in other jurisdictions. Ramming, of course, is right out. If we are chasing a car and it turns down a one-way road the wrong way the chase is terminated. NEVER fire a weapon at a moving vehicle (unless there is no way to avoid it hitting you).

The pursuit policy is 14 pages long.

Bean Bags

There are many less-lethal weapons law enforcement has to use. Pepper spray had been eliminated from NOPD’s use and now bean bag rounds were eliminated. This was following a HUGE protest on the Mississippi River Bridge where cops were nearly thrown off the bridge. Bean bag rounds were used against the advancing “protesters” and later, after much media fanfare, they were eliminated from our list of usable things.

Use of Force

We can no longer use pepper spray. The rumor behind this rule is they wanted us to weigh our pepper canisters before and after the shift to ensure we were not spraying people indiscriminately and without documenting it.

The documentation of uses of force has gone off the deep end. Many departments simply document the force in their police report. We have to do that AND a separate report. I understand the need to document uses of force, but the amount of paperwork involved today for these incidents is truly shocking. And the requirement for completion is crazy considering how many incidents of force we have. We have so many because things are considered a use of force you may not realize are. One is pointing a gun at someone. When we see a possible suspect of a violent crime and order him to the ground while pointing our gun at them, that is a use of force even if we never put our hands on the person.

In 2022 there were 490 reported uses of force. Most of those did not involve manually using force on anyone. In the first week of December of 2023 there are already 490 meaning we will surpass last year’s numbers by December 31. People are becoming reluctant to draw their weapon now which is increasing their personal safety liability.

Performance Standards and Accountability

All uses of force are reviewed by either the Force Investigation Team (FIT) in the Public Integrity Bureau (PIB) or by civilians in the Performance Standards and Accountability Bureau (PSAB) or both. All videos are reviewed and many times, other things will be pointed out which are not involved in the use of force, such as a rude word uttered or an incorrect uniform part. I wish this was fiction, but it is not. They are trained to look for violations aside from the action of the force being used.

Besides reviewing videos on uses of force, PSAB randomly reviews all incidents where a vehicle or a pedestrian was stopped, or where someone was searched or arrested. These videos “reveal” multiple violations ranging from the officer not introducing themselves in a reasonable time to actual cases of unprofessionalism or even criminal activity. Mostly, though, the violations are the lack of an introduction or some other minor offense like cursing which nobody ever complained about. Even though a complaint was not made, that officer gets written up. You can imagine how many officers get written up and how many times each one does. This is not a good method for retaining officers in the department. I was once written up in the 7th District when I was in the car with Kurt Eischen and nobody else. The windows were up, and I said a curse word. This was captured on the car camera because our lights were on as we cleared a crowd. Nobody heard me and nobody ever would have, but someone randomly listening to a camera recording heard it and I got written up.

Many times, these reviewed videos are from a year ago and up to even two years old. In most cases the officer has already corrected whatever minor issue they had, or in some cases the officer is no longer employed at NOPD. In all cases, no citizen had ever made a complaint and the complaint is generated by the civilian in PSAB.

PIB has a term they use which makes me cringe. “Allegation driven” is the term. It means the unit is allegation driven and every and all complaints are accepted and issued a control number or are diverted to another system of discipline, no matter how unlikely or ridiculous. Even in instances where the body worn camera absolutely disproves the allegation, an entire investigation needs to occur. The number of anonymous complaints is maddening, as many come from officers on other officers.

DI-1 / FDI

This is the old and new term for a Formal Disciplinary Investigation. These are assigned to supervisors in the unit where the accused officer works. PIB only handles criminal cases and a very select few administrative cases. A simple policy violation like unprofessionalism results in a months long investigation taking away time from the supervisor’s regular duties. The resulting document is at least 10 pages long and up to 100 pages long once attachments are added. Many investigations barely fit into a manilla envelope.

These investigations are then forwarded to the supervisor’s lieutenant who must review and sign off on it, and further to the captain and then to the bureau chief. All of this before it goes to PIB for a review, signature from that chief, and then finally to the Superintendent for their signature. Any one of these people can change the recommended disposition with a cover letter. The document can also be kicked back to the original investigator by any of these individuals. Lately three investigations I am aware of from two different districts were kicked back because one or more pages appeared “dirty” due to a poor printer.

You may be wondering, like me, why we print all of this out in the year 2023. Email has been widely available since the mid 1990s and certainly by 2000 this department was using it for everything. Further than this, there are now shared databases and file folders. Technology evolved decades ago eliminating the need to print out tons of paper. That paper we print out needs to be signed with a pen, then physically driven in a car to the next location. We cannot print, sign, then scan it and send it. The original document must be hand delivered. Nor can we use electronic signatures, a legally binding authenticatable method used all over the United States and the UK by all large corporations. We must print, sign and drive. (The same goes for transfer requests. I need to type it up, print it, sign it, drive it to the other captain, have them sign it, then drive it to the bureau chief. None of this can be scanned and sent in an email. This is a single sheet of paper.)

Some supervisors will have more than one FDI assigned to them at a time. This is how many of these we have to investigate. Again, you can see why cops would rather just go to another department with common sense solutions. If I wasn’t even working the day I am accused of doing something and that’s been shown, nobody should ever have to do an investigation and the accusation shouldn’t go on my permanent record, never to be erased.

The way the clock works

Most cops aren’t mathematicians or scientists – though some are. We are smart, though. Try getting through the police academy not being at least smart enough to understand all the policies and especially the legal aspects of the job. We need to know what makes up the elements of each violation, the law which applies, and how it relates to other laws which determine what we ultimately charge a suspect with at lockup.

This math isn’t that hard, but wow do we get it wrong. I’ll start with how things were before the 12-hour shifts. Officers worked an 8-hour shift plus 35 minutes for roll call. (There is a history here explaining the time of roll call involving a 171 hour pay cycle long since abandoned, but it’s not important.) So, officers work 8 hours 35 minutes a day. 8.58 hours. NOT 8.35 hours. This was the most common error back then.

Now we work 12 hour shifts with similar issues when adding in the roll call time. It is more complicated since officers need a few extra minutes one week vs the next to make up the full number of hours afforded to them with the 8-hour shifts, but all that is not important either. 8.58 is 8 hours 35 minutes.

This brings me to the 16:35 overage issue. The consent decree and NOPD policy has a provision wherein an officer cannot work over 16 hours 35 minutes in any 24-hour period. That seems like a simple calculation on the surface until you realize that the 24-hour clock is a rolling 24-hours. Each time an officer starts a regular shift, or an overtime shift or an off-duty detail, it starts another 24-hour clock. An officer can have three 24-hour clocks rolling at once, and they cannot have worked 16 hours 25 minutes within any of those rolling clocks.

Example (24-hour time works best):
Regular shift: Monday 0700 – 1900. (This clock starts at 0700 and goes to 0700 Tuesday.) 12 hours on this clock worked. This officer is off duty on Tuesday.

Overtime shift: Monday 2000 – 2200. (This clock starts at 2000 and goes to 2000 Tuesday and intersects with the previous clock until 0700 Tuesday.) 2 hours on this clock worked and 2 hours added to previous clock bringing that one to 14 hours.

Detail: Tuesday 0600 – 1000. (This clock starts at 0600 Tuesday and goes to 0600 Wednesday and intersects with BOTH previous clocks.) 4 hours on this clock. 6 hours on the clock starting with the overtime shift, and adds an hour to the first clock, bringing that one to 15 hours.

This officer has not had a violation so far. The officer needs to look ahead at when their next 12 hour shift is scheduled so they do not run into a problem with any of the previous clocks.

You can see how utterly confusing this can get. As a result, PSAB has identified hundreds of officers who have “violated” this rule by working a couple hours to even a few minutes beyond the allowable 16 hours and 35 minutes permitted within any 24-hour period.

Another reason people are fed up. (NOTE: It’s perfectly fine to work 18 hours in a row on Endymion Sunday.)

Other dumb stuff

Facial Recognition

We are allowed to use the very widely available technology of facial recognition, which is used by iPhones, Facebook, and tons of other places. The technology is amazing and accurate. But we need to jump through SO MANY hoops and rule out every other avenue before submitting a request to use it that it has become something we just consider we can’t use.

Its purpose would not be as a last resort. The purpose is a mere starting point. A facial recognition “hit” would never result in an arrest warrant. It is just the very beginning of a hint. Much more corroboration needs to be established first, like cell phone records. Video and eyewitnesses. Interviews. Using it, instead, AFTER all these efforts have been made is useless.

Crime Cameras

The crime cameras are amazing. They can read my name tag from a block away. But they are never pointed at the places we want them to see. This is because of some ACLU type entity complaining about being spied on by the cameras. Now they just catch traffic accidents, mostly.

Here is a place to point out that the red light and speeding camera tickets are very annoying, but I never get one when I don’t run the light or when I drive at the speed limit. Never.

Legal Hurdles

Clearing auto theft cases is a huge burden on detectives. Simply catching someone in the act is near impossible. So, when we catch someone in a stolen car (not by chasing it, of course – we can’t do that) we can only charge the person with “possession of stolen property” since we cannot prove they were the one who actually stole it. This arrest does not clear the case because nobody is ever arrested for STEALING the car in these instances.

Available Police Vehicles

Cars. You’d think with a parking lot full of cars we’d have no problem. In the 5th and the 2nd District I had a full lot of marked police cars. The problem was that NONE of them worked. Some worked a little, but not enough to go on the street. No A/C, overheating, no overhead lights or siren… on and on. We have not only a lot full, with two of those cars wrecked in the lot for over a calendar year, but we have six at the shop. The four we have in the 2nd which work are for both the patrol officers and the rank.

The dumb part is we have hundreds of new cars, but they are being driven 10 or so at a time to Baton Rouge to be “outfitted” with lights, siren, computer, etc. What a great idea to drive hundreds of cars back and forth to Baton Rouge rather than use a local vendor for it. Or even have the Baton Rouge vendor drive a big truck with all the stuff in it HERE to outfit the cars. I hear at least one local vendor declined since the city owes them many thousands of dollars. The same reason I hear we switched oil change companies. We owe the one we used up till last week in the neighborhood of $17,000.

EMAIL

“Mailbox full”. Recently officers have been getting email kickbacks saying that the receiving officer had a full mailbox. I don’t know what limits were placed on new personnel, but my email inbox had tens of thousands of emails, and I regularly erased email. The box fills fast. Dozens of emails a day. Several “Travel” emails would appear each day documenting how officer so-and-so was travelling to Baton Rouge or somewhere for a class “utilizing” vehicle #whatever. Nobody cares and there is no regulation that this must be done, but we’ve done it since the days of the teletype. If anyone leaves the jurisdiction their supervisor needs to know and NOT everyone on the department.

Having no regulation requiring this, or any regulation referencing it at all, I would annually submit a form for policy change disallowing these inbox clogging crap emails. They still come.

COMSTAT / MAX

Dumb

Need furlough on days off because on Thursday they will say you need to attend something unless you have pre-approved furlough. Also, don’t go get riot trained if you don’t want to be called in on every day off.

Air Condition Controls