By Laura Maggi
New Orleans Times
New Orleans police now arrest people at a faster pace than before Hurricane Katrina, and focus too much on minor municipal and traffic offenses that detract from the pursuit of violent criminals, according to a Metropolitan Crime Commission report to be released today.
A separate analysis of District Attorney Eddie Jordan’s office shows it now pursues more misdemeanors than felonies, in comparison with its average before Katrina. In the first quarter of 2007, about 41 percent of state cases accepted by Jordan involved felonies, compared with a quarterly average of 54 percent from October 2003 to September 2004, according to the report.
These facts led the Crime Commission, a nonprofit watchdog group, to conclude that the NOPD and the district attorney need to focus more of their limited resources on chasing serious criminals. For the police, that might mean issuing only tickets for minor traffic or municipal offenses, rather than jailing people. The report advises prosecutors to help the NOPD build better cases against criminals accused of felonies, particularly violent crimes.
The Crime Commission analysis looked at the roughly 14,800 arrests made by New Orleans Police Department officers in the first quarter of 2007, finding that 7,585 — or 51 percent — were for traffic and municipal violations. The analysis also compared the total number of arrests in that period with the roughly 23,500 made in the first three months of 2005. Adjusting for the reduced number of New Orleans inhabitants — and using the most generous figure pegging the city’s population at 255,000 -- the Crime Commission calculated that the NOPD made 12 percent more arrests per capita than before the storm.
Violence undeterred
Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche called the focus on comparatively trivial offenses particularly troubling because it matches the pattern before Katrina, when 56 percent of all arrests in the first quarter of 2005 represented minor violations. Historically, such minor busts have done little to reduce the overall crime rate, particularly violent crime, and have the undesirable side effect of turning people in violent neighborhoods against the police. Goyeneche pointed out that in some cases, people arrested for traffic or other minor crimes can end up in the jury pool at Criminal District Court, where state crimes are prosecuted.
“They are alienating a substantial portion of the community that will be sitting in judgment of officers’ credibility when serious felony cases are being tried,” he said.
The emphasis on small crimes is nothing new, the report noted. “These were problems pre-dating Hurricane Katrina, going back for a couple of decades,” Goyeneche said.
The Police Department provided no comment on the report. An NOPD spokesman said Superintendent Warren Riley was not available for comment Monday because he is at a three-day retreat with former Houston Police Chief Lee P. Brown, who was hired as a consultant in January to evaluate the department’s policing strategies.
Brown advocates community policing, which aims to improve the relations between police departments and residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods. While those neighborhoods desperately need police protection, recent polling has shown that many residents don’t trust the police, citing negative interactions with officers.
Prosecuting felonies
First Assistant District Attorney Gaynell Williams said the district attorney’s office is targeting its efforts on violent offenders who are arrested for felonies. She pointed to a portion of the study that found that, out of the violent felony cases brought to prosecutors, the acceptance rate has risen to 50 percent, compared with about 37 percent three years ago. In the first quarter of 2007, the DA accepted 137 violent felony cases and refused 135 cases.
Williams did not have an explanation about why her agency now accepts a greater percentage of misdemeanors compared with felonies, except to say that prosecutors decide on which cases to pursue based on the strength of the evidence.
Many of the arrests made in the first quarter were at an officer’s discretion. Of the 2,043 traffic arrests from January to March 2007, only 291 were for driving while intoxicated and another 66 were for traffic attachments, situations where officers are mandated to arrest. Similarly, out of the 5,542 municipal arrests, only 585 were for domestic violence. Another 1,200 were for municipal attachments, when a judge has ordered the police to arrest somebody for failing to show up for court or not paying required fines and fees, according to the Crime Commission’s data.
Noting that the NOPD currently has a shortage of officers, Goyeneche said the agency should encourage officers to issue citations and tickets in such cases rather than make an arrest. That would cut down on the amount of time that officers waste bringing minor offenders to the Orleans Parish Prison central lockup.
Felonies and misdemeanors
The Crime Commission report also looked at the district attorney’s office record of accepting or refusing state cases — the more serious crimes in Criminal District Court — in the first quarter of 2007. Because state law gives the district attorney up to 60 days to decide what to do on most cases, those decided on by the prosecutors and the people arrested by NOPD do not always overlap.
Jordan’s office accepted charges against about 59 percent of the 3,066 people arrested on suspicion of state felonies or misdemeanors, according to the report. This is almost exactly the same as the acceptance rate from the commission’s report analyzing cases in 2003-04.
But the number of defendants now being prosecuted for felonies — the most serious crimes — dropped to 41 percent of the accepted state cases.
Overall, the district attorney accepted about 48 percent of all the felony cases considered by the office in early 2007. While this is consistent with the level of acceptance in 2003-04, the report notes that many accepted cases will end up getting dismissed or the accused will be found innocent at trial.
In comparison, the conviction rate nationwide for people arrested on felony charges is much higher, with 57 percent of those arrested for these kind of crimes found guilty, according to the report.
In order to increase the level of convictions, the Crime Commission recommended that the district attorney place prosecutors in the NOPD’s district stations — an idea that was recently trumpeted by a number of community groups.
Williams said the district attorney’s office supports the idea and is looking for money to hire additional prosecutors. “It would continue to improve the relationship between police officers and prosecutors,” she said. “And it would give prosecutors an opportunity to interact one-on-one with victims and witnesses.”
Copyright 2007 The New Orleans Times-Picayune