New Orleans insists its police department is ready to end federal...

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : Confronted by community activists at a recent public meeting with data indicating these racial disparities, Aronie said federal oversight focused on improving the police department's policies and structures given "the difficulties of solving bias in the same way it exists across almost every institution in the U.S.""I would like to live in a city where those differences in practice reflect in the statistics before NOPD exits oversight," Zunyana Crier, an activist with the group New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police, responded.
46% : To what extent federal oversight meaningfully changed the NOPD is particularly relevant as a cadre of high-ranking former NOPD officers and one of the lawyers overseeing the city consent decree are now responsible for managing a state-level reform plan for the Minneapolis police department in the wake of George Floyd´s murder.
44% : If the federal judge agrees with the city and the Department of Justice motion to end the consent decree filed in Sept., the NOPD will remain under federal oversight for an additional two year sustainment period.
44% : W.C. Johnson, a longtime community activist opposed to ending the consent decree, said he and others had grown cynical over the years with the NOPD's willingness to work with residents: "When you´re not being taken seriously, when you´re not being included, why waste time?"Police accountability groups have also expressed concerns over the lack of Spanish and Vietnamese language accessibility in the monthslong period of public comment - given the two group's large presence in the city - after the city filed the motion to wind down federal oversight.
43% : Despite these ongoing issues, Rafael Goyeneche, president of a local anti-corruption nonprofit, the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said federal oversight of the NOPD and its upwards of 900 members should be seen as a "success story" - especially in light of the department's history.
40% : But a range of prominent community activists and watchdogs say the NOPD is still not yet ready to relinquish federal oversight.
35% : The New Orleans Police Department, plagued for decades by corruption, is pushing to finally end more than a decade of federal oversight, amid lingering memories of a 1994 murder ordered by a crooked cop and an attempted cover-up in the 2005 killing of unarmed civilians.

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