Drivers cruising past New Orleans schools this year are finding out the hard way that a dead camera does not mean a free pass. NOPD officers can now cite a driver for going just 1 mile per hour over the 20 mph school-zone limit, and the department says it is doing exactly that, even though the city’s automated speed cameras have remained shut off for over a year.
The enforcement push comes as New Orleans remains locked in a legal battle over a 2024 state law requiring municipalities to split school-zone camera fine revenue with local school districts before those cameras can legally operate again. As reported by NOLA.com, the city has challenged that law in a constitutional lawsuit filed in the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge, and that case is still ongoing. In the meantime, NOPD traffic officers trained on August 4th to operate handheld radar and lidar speed-tracking devices, and each police district has now received its own speed guns.
117 Tickets in a Single West Bank Sweep
The scale of the manual enforcement effort was on display during a recent operation in a West Bank school zone, where NOPD issued 117 citations over a two-hour period, according to the same NOLA.com report. Officers separately pulled over speeders near Alice Harte Charter School in the Old Aurora neighborhood of Algiers, stopping 38 vehicles in that zone alone. NOPD officers are writing more tickets this year than last year, and the traffic unit has added three officers over the past two months, per the report.
Lt. Avery Theard, assistant commander of the NOPD Traffic Division, told the paper that speeding near schools puts children in real danger, whether they are waiting for a bus or walking to campus, and that higher speeds magnify the severity of any collision. The department says it decides where to deploy officers based on community complaints, officer observations, and data pointing to known speeding hot spots, and traffic officers will keep focusing enforcement on those locations. NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick has made the ticketing push part of a larger initiative prioritizing traffic safety citywide, the outlet reports.
Why the Cameras Are Still Dark
The cameras did not go quiet by accident. Louisiana lawmakers passed Act 103 in 2024, which under Orleans Parish School Board guidance requires cities to sign a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement sharing 40% of net camera ticket revenue with school governing authorities before automated devices can run in school zones. New Orleans and the school board eventually struck a deal on August 21, 2025, agreeing to a 60/40 revenue split and distributing school funds on a per-pupil basis using February enrollment counts that cover district-run and charter campuses alike…