Legal News

DOJ Accuses New Orleans Police of Misconduct

By Nathan Koppel

The Justice Department has issued a blistering report accusing the New Orleans Police Department of a litany of misconduct, ranging from shooting unarmed people following Hurricane Katrina to poorly training their K-9 unit to a point that dogs would attack their own handlers.

And that’s not all, according to the DOJ report, detailed in this Bloomberg article. (Click here to view the report.)

New Orleans law enforcement also allegedly practiced racial and ethnic profiling, discriminated against gays and lesbians, and repeatedly failed to investigate sexual assault and domestic violence complaints.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole said Thursday in a statement that poor leadership in the department led to the  misconduct.

New Orleans Police Chief Ronald Serpas later said  that an independent monitor will be appointed to ensure that the department implements the reforms recommended by DOJ.

“There will be federal-court oversight,” Serpas said, adding “there is nothing broken that cannot be fixed.” (Here’s a link to Serpas’s public comments.)

The NOPD, Bloomberg reports, is under scrutiny in more than a half dozen federal criminal investigations, including one focusing on the 2005 shootings of six unarmed people on the Danziger Bridge post-Katrina.

Five New Orleans officers have pleaded guilty to criminal charges stemming from an attempted cover-up of the incident, according to Bloomberg.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 17, 2011 (boomark / email).