Crime is falling in the United States. Nowhere has the drop in crime been more dramatic in the past year than in New Orleans, Louisiana. Contributing editor David Pitts looks at how police reform led directly to the remarkable reduction in crime in the city.








Mayor Marc Morial likes to call New Orleans the comeback city because of its plunging crime rate and booming economy. But during much of the 1980s, and especially during the early years of this decade, New Orleans was a city in crisis. Its homicide rate was the highest in the nation and climbing. Serious crime in general was at an all-time high. The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) had a nationwide reputation for corruption and ineffectiveness.

The situation was so bad that the federal government contemplated taking over control of the NOPD, an unprecedented move in a country that prides itself on local control of municipal police departments.

"It was a low point in the history of law enforcement in this city. We were faced with a crime wave that was spiraling out of control," recalls Terry Ebbert, executive director of the New Orleans Police Foundation (NOPF), an alliance of corporate leaders and community groups working with the NOPD to forge a business approach to policing and more effective crime fighting strategies.

Morial credits the foundation with providing vitally needed private funds to help pay for a radical police reform program that would have been politically impossible to finance from tax revenues alone. Supporters of the reforms say success is reflected in improving crime statistics across the board.

The situation began to turn around in 1995 following years of escalating lawlessness. The crime rate fell slowly that year and in 1996, but in 1997 it has plummeted. According to police data, from January through September, citywide crime went down 13 percent in total over last year. Serious crime is down even more. Homicides have declined 18 percent and armed robberies by 32 percent, while arrests are up 26 percent. There also has been a 25-percent increase in the solved crime rate.

Every city neighborhood showed a decline ranging from nine percent to 38 percent. Crime is still high compared to most other American cities, but observers say the startling drop this year could be a turning point in the city's long battle against lawbreakers.

POLITICAL COURAGE

According to Ebbert, much of the credit goes to two men who were determined to break the stranglehold of crime by transforming the NOPD from an inept bureaucracy into an efficient crime fighting machine -- Morial and Police Chief Richard Pennington, formerly deputy police chief in Washington, D.C., whom Morial appointed in October 1994 after a nationwide search.

"I think it all started with Morial," Ebbert says. "It took tremendous political courage to take on the police brass, and to hire Superintendent Pennington from outside the force and to give him the flexibility needed to do the job."

"Dutch" Morial, the mayor's father, won election as the first black mayor of the city in 1977 and had tried, with little apparent success, to reform the NOPD during his terms of office. So the junior Morial knew how resistant city bureaucracies, and particularly the police bureaucracy, could be. He was determined to appoint a chief from outside the force, according to sources at the NOPD.

"I think the changes have been a long time in coming," says Beverly Gianna of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors' Bureau. "The reforms have galvanized the community and given people new hope that we can get on top of the crime problem."

RESPONSIBILITY TO THE COMMUNITY

Morial and Pennington believed the key to reforming the NOPD was not expanding police powers, not allowing the cops to take the gloves off, but instead making them more accountable and more responsive to the community.








New Orleans Police Chief
Richard Pennington








"A major problem was that the police were totally reactive," says Ebbert. "There was no thought of trying to prevent crime before it occurred or of zeroing in on areas where crime was particularly high. Moreover, corruption was rampant." Pennington knew "that he would have to bring a lot of people in from outside -- people he knew and trusted -- to help turn things around, and he has brought new people in," says Gianna.

In the largest reorganization in NOPD history, Pennington launched a major decentralization plan placing all crime fighting responsibilities under eight district commanders. The idea was to make the NOPD more professional, efficient and flexible. Among the changes made were:

• Sharply increasing police salaries to help combat corruption. The NOPD was among the most poorly paid police departments in the nation with starting salaries of only $16,000 a year. Even the deputy police chief earned only $42,000 a year. But since 1995, top cops have received big pay hikes. Officers have received four separate pay increases totaling 36 to almost 70 percent. Cops just starting their careers now earn $30,000 a year.

• Hiring 400 additional officers to supplement the current force of almost 1,300; 200 of the new hires are projected to be in place by year's end. The city's main newspaper, The Times-Picayune, calls it "the most aggressive recruiting effort in the city's history." And Morial will continue the recruiting drive next year. In his proposed 1998 budget, announced in late October, staffing is frozen in all city agencies, except the NOPD.

• Requiring ethics education as part of officer training with stress on the importance of respecting the constitutional rights of citizens. The recruitment process also was overhauled and streamlined, and psychological screening was adopted to eliminate potential rogue cops. Until Pennington's appointment, even a criminal record was not an automatic bar to joining the NOPD.

• Reforming the Internal Affairs Department, responsible for investigating charges of police corruption and abuse. Renamed the Public Integrity Unit (PIU), it was moved from police headquarters so as not to intimidate complainants. "We're working on making the PIU proactive and not just reactive to complaints," says Pennington. The PIU "is becoming a national example to other departments," he adds.

• Adopting community-policing techniques. Police substations were located in New Orleans' large public housing projects where much of the crime occurs. "There has been a 75-percent reduction in the murder rate in these areas since community policing was instituted," according to Morial, who credits federal grants with helping put this program in place.

• Calling in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to probe allegations of police corruption and brutality. That move resulted in dozens of resignations and reprimands. Since Pennington became police chief, he has fired, suspended or demoted more than 200 officers, over one-sixth of the department, but he says more still needs to be done to root out unlawful cops.

• Instituting a policy of zero tolerance for petty crimes that are now thought to nurture a climate in which serious lawbreaking can flourish. It was adopted after evidence accumulated that a similar policy implemented in New York City was a key factor in the reduction of crime there.

• Upgrading crime-fighting technology at the NOPD. A new state-of-the-art crime laboratory was built, a modernized emergency radio communications system was introduced, and COMSTAT, a crime data management system that tracks criminal activity citywide, was launched.

COMSTAT

COMSTAT, basically a tool to make the police more responsive in curbing crime in their communities, is the brainchild of Jack Maple, a legendary New York City cop who, by all accounts, wrought a revolution in accountability in the New York City Police Department. His system is credited with helping produce a 50-percent drop in the homicide rate there since 1993.

Maple was lured to New Orleans in the hope that he could repeat his success in New York by introducing a version of COMSTAT here. The system involves projecting patterns and levels of crime, district-by-district, onto huge computerized maps to pinpoint trouble spots. District commanders are grilled about incidents in their jurisdictions at regularly scheduled meetings and asked to take immediate countermeasures. Additional cops are dispatched to the most troubled areas.

"COMSTAT was exactly the kind of tool we needed in New Orleans where accountability was at a very low level," says John Linder, Maple's partner who was hired as a consultant here last July and brought Maple and COMSTAT to New Orleans last fall. The two worked together in New York. "Jack concentrates on COMSTAT, while I look at the overall picture -- such issues as the reward system, discipline, structure and training" in the NOPD, he remarks.

"What Jack did with COMSTAT is essentially join computer technology with the old pin maps," Linder continues. "The result is real-time data so that you can spot clusters of crime immediately. It's real-time accountability. Then you have rapid deployment of resources and relentless followup."

"The reforms have had a direct impact on the plunging crime statistics for 1997," says Ebbert who believes COMSTAT is the "heart and soul" of the revolution in police accountability. "All those district commanders are held accountable every Friday for what happens under their command," he adds. Ebbert's NOPF kicked in the half-million dollars needed to bring Linder and Maple to New Orleans.

In his annual address to the Metropolitan Crime Commission in late October, Pennington also gives credit to COMSTAT. "It fosters a competitive spirit among districts, with officers and commanders vying weekly for the most significant drop in crime," he says.

AN ECONOMIC UPTURN

Morial and Pennington concede that the overhaul of the police force is not the total explanation for the downward spiral of serious crime, which fell across the nation as a whole over the last year. Like many other cities in the United States, New Orleans is in the midst of an economic upturn, which also is helping to reduce lawbreaking.

Memories of the 1980s, when the city suffered an oil bust, the disappearance of many traditional, industrial jobs and a spiraling drug epidemic -- particularly of crack cocaine -- are now fading, although residents in poor areas say the drug problem there is still serious.

New jobs in the service industry, particularly tourism, are creating additional opportunities for employment. Tourism grew six percent in 1996, while the number of conventions held in the city was up nine percent. Although many of the new jobs are low-paid by American standards, observers say the improving economy is definitely helping to cut crime.

Other significant measures have included the imposition of a juvenile curfew, one of the most stringent in the nation. It requires children under the age of 17 to be off the streets by 9 p.m. In recent years, a disproportionate number of crimes has been committed by juveniles in New Orleans, as in other cities.

The juvenile curfew "has had a direct impact on reducing crime," says Ebbert, "especially in those areas where it has been aggressively enforced." It's been "a major factor," says Gianna. "Juvenile crime has gone down 20 to 30 percent over the last few years."

OTHER INITIATIVES

Another important initiative is the Domestic Violence Task Force, a group that involves not only law enforcement and the criminal justice system, but non-profit agencies and other organizations that work together to prevent family disputes from escalating into potentially serious crime situations.

The Recreate New Orleans Program is a partnership between NOPD and the Young Leadership Council. It provides recreational opportunities and mentoring to inner-city children and, according to Morial, is a model of what volunteerism can do to help prevent crime.

But New York consultants Linder and Maple insist that it is the police reforms that have made the difference in New Orleans. "The reduction in crime here is happening twice as fast as it did in New York," Linder says. "And we did it with half as many officers per capita," as in New York, Morial stresses. "We still have a long way to go, but our force has gone from being a losing team to a winning team, and we are on our way to the championships."

THE COMEBACK CITY

The improvement in crime has been particularly noticeable in the tourist-conscious French Quarter where the number of reportable offenses has dropped nearly 25 percent so far this year, partly due to an increase in police foot and bicycle patrols, one of the community policing measures that, by all accounts, has proven particularly effective.

Although the crime rate also has gone down in poor neighborhoods, further sizable reductions in crime there may rest on improvements in living conditions. The poverty rate is the third highest in the country, a point stressed by social scientists who allege a direct connection between low living standards and crime. About a third of the city's homicides occur in poor neighborhoods.

In the public housing projects, residents say they have noticed the drop in crime since Morial and Pennington came into office and they are no longer as cynical about the NOPD as they were in previous years. But they also say more needs to be done. Typical of comments you hear from residents in less well-off areas are those of Willie Dixon, a former maintenance employee with the Trailways Bus Company, who now sells newspapers on a street corner in the central business district.

Dixon, who lives in "Desire," one of the largest of the public housing projects, says, "It's been getting better since they got more police. But it won't improve a lot more unless they get back some of the higher-paid jobs."

"Before you can do that," according to Linder, "you must have public safety; you must have what I call consequential reality on the street -- knowing that if you commit a crime the chances of getting caught are high. Then, you can work on improving the schools and bringing more business in." Linder also points out that most crimes occur in poor neighborhoods and that most of the victims are black, so fighting crime helps poor people and black people particularly.

Morial and Pennington, both African American, agree reducing crime is a precondition for improving the lives of African Americans and everyone else in the city. They know that for New Orleans to become widely known as The Comeback City, as they would like, even larger reductions in serious crime will be necessary over a sustained time period.

Pennington is confident that will occur. "We're on the right track to winning the battle against crime," he says. Ebbert agrees: "If we get 1,700 police officers onto the streets, I believe New Orleans will have the greatest reduction in crime of any city in the United States." The city "is not where we want it to be, not yet. But we're moving rapidly in the right direction. I think New Orleans will become a model for innovative crime fighting," says Gianna.

Issues of Democracy
USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4, November 1997