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YOU DON’T TURN IT AROUND
COVER STORY
BY THROWING
They don’t have a right to do that. The point for me is this: Officers are going to continually be trained and updated. … We are on the verge of instituting some policies here that are going to realign the department’s expectations of truthful behavior. It’s been very successful in other places, and we’re going to do it here.
EVERYBODY
JAIL.
IN
You’ve been up front about G implementing more traffic stops for minor infractions in Nashville. Do you intend to do likewise in New Orleans? I was very up front in Nashville about using vehicle stops as a tool to advance law enforcement, public safety and crime fighting. And it was very successful there. … Here in New Orleans, no less than 20 to 25 percent of all the murders committed in our city: how do you think they happened? Somebody was in their car, got out of their car with their gun, shot and killed somebody, got back in their car, and drove away. Or as they drove by in their car, they reached out the window and started shooting at people. Vehicle stops have been a part of American policing since we’ve had cars. So has warrant service. … Here’s the most important thing about vehicle stops, though: Six years in a row of fewer people going to the hospital after being in an automobile accident. If that’s not public safety, I’m not sure what is. Vehicle stops are just one of the many tools in the tool bag. It’s not the only one. Actually I prefer warrant service, to be honest with you.
YOU TURN IT AROUND BY THE
COMMUNITY
EXERCISING ITS OWN
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > JUNE 22 > 2010
RS
22
You also increased DUI arrests in Nashville, and there were complaints of a quota system.
G
I don’t believe in quotas, and I’ve never asked for them, except [with] DUI — we ought to find everyone we can. Legal, professional pursuit of drunk drivers saves lives. Period. I don’t know anybody who can legitimately say they don’t believe that. … In some years, drunk drivers kill more than murderers. One of the problems I’ve always had with the media is creating this image of murder as the crime you should be afraid of — it could happen to you tomorrow. Well, the truth of American murder is it’s almost always someone who knew someone that they were mad as hell at. A drunk driver ought to have you shaking in your boots because that’s the stranger you never laid eyes on who will annihilate your family. I take drunk driving very seriously because [preventing] it saves
RS
CONTROL.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> lives. But it’s got to be legal; it’s got to be professional.
Nashville cops busted your G own son twice for DUI. How were those cases adjudicated?
RS
: He was found guilty. And he did time in jail.
Did any of that affect your own thinking about addiction and/or DUI?
G
Absolutely. He was addicted. He was horribly addicted. And his father’s a policeman, his stepmother’s a nurse, his mother’s a nurse, and his sister’s a nurse. He never acted out in front of us. When he got arrested the second time we all realized, “Wow, something’s going on here.” It’s one of the things that makes me a better police chief. I’ve had two members of my wife’s family killed by domestic violence, and my son was arrested for drunk driving twice. I used to read the data that talked about upwards of 24 to 25 percent of all drunk-driving arrests are people with alcohol problems who don’t know it yet. Now I understand it, because my son never demonstrated that behavior in front of his family. We’d have a crawfish boil; he might drink a beer. He never obliterated himself in front of us. So for us, the DUI arrest was what cleaned him up. He’s five years sober now with a
RS
1-year-old baby, married three years.
DA Leon Cannizzaro wants to move minor marijuana cases out of Criminal Court and prosecute them as ticketed misdemeanors. Do you support that idea?
G
Yeah, I am for it. … [It’s a] very efficient and effective way for most low level offenders who really aren’t going to get in trouble too many times. It gets them in the system. They get themselves held accountable. And you’re not sitting in the lockup for two or three hours. I support any use of police resources on an arrest decision that would keep them from having to go to lockup. This segues into an important point: We are not going to be the police department that tells neighborhoods what we think is important for their policing needs. That’s antithetical to community policing. Community policing is, you sit down with the neighborhood group and you say to them, “What is it that’s bothering you? Here’s what we think we can do to help. Here’s the various tools that we have.” What we have to do is be responsive to what their problem is and tailor our response to them so that we do the one thing that makes us all come together — when they feel comfortable and confident with us. … That’s how you turn crime around in a community. You don’t turn it around by
RS
throwing everybody in jail. You turn it around by the community exercising its own control. … That’s what it’s all about — community policing in a nutshell.
Some citizens who do not have faith in NOPD reacted poorly to your selection as chief. What can you tell them, as a third generation cop taking over the New Orleans Police Department, to convince them that you’re going to sweep out corruption and clean things up?
G
I think first and foremost, the 21 years I’ve spent here, I had a chance to be on the ground and see some of the best days of the NOPD — and some ugly days. I saw how the department could respond, and I saw how the department could change, and I saw how the public could respond. Secondly, I’ve been gone for nine years. In the nine years I’ve been gone, I have been the chief twice. I’m the most experienced police chief ever appointed in the history of New Orleans. When Richard [Pennington] came here, he had been a deputy chief. This was his first big job. You go down the line. I’m the first person to ever come here having actually been the chief twice, once in a state police agency and once in a major city twice the size of New Orleans in population. So I bring a whole different set of skills than what I left with. The other thing, yeah, I spent 21 years on the police department, but I spent all my life here. I went to public school here. I dropped out of public school here. I grew up behind the old ice house on Gentilly Boulevard. I know people in New Orleans. I know New Orleans. I’m not, like, coming from Berkeley, Calif., wouldn’t know where Louisiana was except on a map. So my message to the public is, what I’ve learned since I’ve been gone has advanced me a lot further than when I left.
RS
The cover up and guilty pleas in the Danziger Bridge case — and now the indictments in the [Henry] Glover case — confirm the worst fears of many black citizens that NOPD has a significant number of rogue cops who cover up for each other. How do you intend to gain the trust of the AfricanAmerican community, specifically?
G
Several things. One, working through everything we can do to assist the Department of Justice Criminal Division to clear out all these cases and take them to wherever they lead. If there’s anybody else left in this department who had anything to do
RS