New Orleans insists its police department is ready to end federal oversight. Not all are convinced

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — 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.

Department critics are expected to voice opposition to lifting court-ordered federal oversight at a hearing Tuesday in federal court, likely raising concerns before a federal judge over racial disparities in police use of force, poor handling of sex crimes and lackluster community engagement.

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.

In 2011, the Department of Justice investigation found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity in the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). Two years later, the City of New Orleans entered into what it described as “the nation’s most expansive” federal oversight plan — a reform pact known as a consent decree — to fix the city’s police force.

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