The New Orleans Police Department is undergoing a makeover, and it's getting whiter in the process.
The new crop of New Orleans cops is a reverse image of the group that patrols the streets today, a majority-black force that ranks among the 10 most racially representative police agencies in the country, according to one recent study.
Today's NOPD is 57 percent black and 37 percent white, police figures show. But that's changing fast. Since the department resumed hiring in 2013 after a four-year freeze, 58 percent of its new officers are white and just 33 percent are black, according to NOPD figures.
One reason is that as the department casts a wide net to refill its depleted ranks, people from other states are making it through the hiring process at significantly higher rates than New Orleans applicants and those from other Louisiana parishes. The success rate of applicants from New Orleans, who are predominantly black, lags behind, recent data show.
For black applicants in general, and black New Orleanians in particular, the biggest stumbling block is a Civil Service Commission exam that has come under federal scrutiny for bias against minority candidates, the data show.
While racial disparities in policing produce heated political debates in Baton Rouge and across the country, the demographic shift at the NOPD has gone largely unnoticed, with the overall size of the force dominating local discussion amid pressure to reduce lengthy response times.
The drive to reach Mayor Mitch Landrieu's goal of 1,600 officers so far has led to marginal net gains, with the new blood largely offset by a persistent drain of cops leaving the department. The force now stands at 1,161 officers, according to the NOPD.
In the meantime, more than one-quarter of the force has turned over, with about 300 recruits hired since the start of 2013. White transplants make up the biggest share of those newcomers, the data show.
NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison, a black New Orleans native who started as a rookie patrolman in 1991, said he doesn't see it as a problem. "I don't think it's a concern right now," he said. "Color does not always equate to good, or great, or caring.
"In an ideal situation, in a perfect world, it would be absolutely great (to have more black officers). I think it's very important we have fair representation, and African-Americans should be on this department so we represent the city's demographics, and I'm going to push to continue to do that," he added. "I am also going to secure the city. We're still going to hire and protect the city, regardless."
Harrison and other police officials say they are making the rounds at historically black colleges, job fairs, black churches and military bases, pushing to attract a diverse applicant pool. They also cite gains in hiring Hispanic and Asian officers, who combined make up 8 percent of the hires since 2013, double the rate of the overall force.
A different environment
Harrison is quick to note that the NOPD is far from unique among police agencies in struggling to hire qualified black candidates, while acknowledging that the difficulties are more acute within the city limits.
It's a different environment, he said, from the one he knew as a McDonogh 35 High School graduate who rose through the ranks as the department gained black officers around him.
Harrison and his family stayed in the city to further his dream of becoming the police superintendent, he said, abiding by a controversial residency rule that was a requirement for promotions and that was seen as favoring black officers.
When Hurricane Katrina struck 11 years ago, Harrison put up 22 fellow officers at his home in Algiers. They appear in a photo on his office wall at police headquarters.
He said he recognizes the homegrown advantages. "It helped me, because I was born and raised and grew up in New Orleans. I understood neighborhood culture, the dynamics of the different schools. We had fun with it," he said.
"It would be great for everybody to have the experience I had. But here's the thing: When a person made up their mind to do something bad, they did it, and I responded as a police officer regardless of what neighborhood they came from and what neighborhood I came from. It almost didn't matter. It mattered if I cared and showed empathy. That just has to do with the heart of the officer."
Before Harrison became chief two years ago, the city made accommodations to boost the supply of potential hires, scrapping the residency requirement for officers and dropping a demand for a certain amount of higher education.
The latter move has expanded the pool, with more than half of all white and Hispanic candidates and two-thirds of black applicants short of the 60 college credits that once were required. But a lack of education still has stymied black hiring, Harrison said.
"It's the same thing here that is happening by and large nationally: African-Americans are not possessing higher levels of post-high school education" that can help them get through the Civil Service exam, he said.
"We're losing them in that vetting process. We're having more success from African-Americans outside of the city than from within the city."
Reasons for rejection
The data suggest attracting black applicants isn't the issue. They still make up a majority of the initial candidate pool.
In response to a public-records request by The New Orleans Advocate, the NOPD provided records for more than 3,700 people who applied to become officers since last October, as well as data on police hires and departures since the start of 2013.
The Advocate analyzed those who passed through — or failed at some stage of — a hiring process that includes written and physical tests, a background check, medical and psychological screening and a final review panel.
Among the findings:
• About 43 percent of all applicants were from outside Louisiana, with 26 percent coming from inside the city limits and 31 percent from other parishes.
• Black applicants in general, and those from New Orleans in particular, were far more likely to be rejected.
• More than 80 percent of New Orleanians who apply are black. But their failure rates were five times higher than for non-black applicants from the city.
• Disregarding geography, non-black applicants who went through the process were three times more likely than black applicants to be made eligible for hiring.
• The Civil Service entrance exam ranks as the leading barrier for all black applicants, but it's worse among black New Orleanians. Failing to meet the minimum starting requirements was the second most common reason for black New Orleans residents to fail, followed by failing the background check.
• For non-black applicants from outside the city or state, background checks were the biggest reason for failure.
• Outside of Louisiana, the largest numbers of applicants hailed from New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, New Jersey and California.
While new recruits to the NOPD have been disproportionately white, so have departures from the agency in recent years. Nearly 400 officers have left the NOPD since the start of 2013, according to city data; 51 percent were white and 45 percent black.
The hiring freeze was still in effect in 2012, when the city agreed to a court-ordered reform process for the NOPD as a result of a sweeping U.S. Department of Justice investigation.
That probe slammed the Police Department for hiring underqualified candidates, then pushing them through a training academy that did little to prepare them for the realities of New Orleans’ streets.
Racial biases?
Jonathan Aronie, who serves as the lead federal monitor overseeing the court-ordered reforms, said he could not speak to diversity in hiring without a closer look at the numbers.
The federal monitors have pushed the department to change its hiring process to eliminate biases against minority candidates. In an August 2015 report, they said the department should scrap a multiple-choice test that has been used as a result of a 1987 court order in favor of a new one. The current test, the federal watchdogs wrote, may disparately impact minority candidates.
The monitors said the decades-old test uses questions that favor people with previous police training. A better one would instead tease out candidates most likely to succeed at the police academy, the monitors wrote.
Most troubling, the monitors wrote, are indications that the test introduces cultural and racial biases into the hiring process. One section, based on wanted bulletins, “displays multiple potential suspects who mostly appear to be minorities.”
Police officials said they are in the process of crafting a new test with the help of the Civil Service Commission and Louisiana Tech University.
The New Orleans Police Department on Friday published a trove of data online that offer a me…
"It's always been an issue. The problem we always run into is: What is this test supposed to be?" said Nelson Lim, a RAND social scientist who has studied police hiring in several large cities.
"When people say, 'We hire the best,' is it really scientifically validated, analyzed for biases, for any presumed knowledge that's not necessary?" Lim asked. "What do these kids need to be the best police officers? That should be the only criteria."
Lim said the shifting demographics of the NOPD may simply be an unintended consequence of a broad recruiting campaign.
"When you're recruiting an out-of-towner, I'm assuming the people will be less likely to be black, just by simple chance. That may be the problem," he said. "You have to always ask yourself: What is your strategic objective?"
Nationally, debate persists over whether a homegrown force, one that looks like the people it serves, leads to better policing.
Teaching New Orleans
In New Orleans, racially charged political fights and courtroom battles over the hiring and promotion of black officers went on for years, much of it centered on the now-defunct residency requirement.
According to a Times-Picayune story from 1990, the year before Harrison joined the force, the NOPD then was 36 percent black. That rose to 43 percent in 1995, and by the early 2000s black officers made up half the force.
Some of those gains came by way of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by black officers.
Larry Preston Williams, a former NOPD officer who was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that led to a consent decree governing the promotion of black officers, said he worries about backsliding.
Williams worked as an officer in the 1970s, when he said the racial divide appeared wider. "I was riding with a white guy, and a black resident complaining would sometimes specifically tell me I could come in the house, but my white partner couldn't," Williams said.
"I did notice African-Americans were more responsive when black officers came out many times, if not most of the time, and that's what you needed."
Ron Wilson, a civil rights attorney who pressed the legal challenge by black officers, said the push for more black hiring and promotion "was a product of the belief that it's helpful to have a police force of people who have a stake or an interest in the city. It's the perception that people who grew up within those communities will have more of a sensitivity and a better rapport with the victims of crime, and also witnesses of crime."
But Capt. Michael Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, argued that today, particularly with the department under court-mandated reforms, race matters less than ever.
Glasser, who is white, was a plaintiff in a successful challenge to the leapfrogging of black officers in promotions under a court mandate from the 1980s.
"This is not a creative environment where we need innovative ideas and freedom of expression to be brought in," Glasser said. "The fact is, we have almost zero discretion in how we handle everything. We can't even ask anyone whether they're a citizen or not. You're on video. You're on audio. There's no wiggle room. Diversity no longer plays a part like it used to. It's overrated."
Harrison noted that New Orleans is changing as well, with the black population declining from 67 percent of the city in 2000 to 60 percent in 2010, after the post-Katrina diaspora.
He also cited "generational differences" that have forced the department to recruit differently. The new breed of officer candidate, he said, is looking far and wide for the best opportunity in law enforcement, wherever it may be.
If they can't find New Orleans in a candidate, Harrison said, they'll teach it.
"After spending 26 weeks in the police academy and 16 weeks in (field) training, you sort of get a sense of what New Orleans is, who New Orleanians are," he said. "The true lessons of what New Orleans is really come when you begin to patrol the streets."