Black Rage in New Orleans: Police Brutality and African American Activism from World War II to Hurricane Katrina

9. “A NEW DAY IN BABYLON”: The Professionalization of the New Orleans Police Department and the Claiming of Urban Public Space

220 9 “A New Day in Babylon” The Professionalization of the New Orleans Police Department and the Claiming of Urban Public Space Simply the Best Person for the Job In 1993, Marc H. Morial captured the mayor’s office largely on a platform to completely overhaul the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) and stamp out corruption and brutality. The thirty-six-year-old attorney and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown Law School ran an unsuccessful race for Congress in 1990, and between 1992 and 1994 he earned a great deal of political experience while serving in the Louisiana state Senate. After defeating Donald Mintz, a white candidate in the 1994 mayor’s race, Morial was eager to change the perception that New Orleans was a dangerous city with an even more dangerous police force. While his father had to confront white racism on the police force during his tenure as mayor, the younger Morial would confront a group of rogue black cops who preyed upon black citizens. Morial would witness the NOPD sink to an alltime low, but he would also be instrumental in its transformation. Shortly after taking office, Morial received a rather thorough transition report on the NOPD. The NOPD Revisited by the International Association of Chiefs of Police examined every area of the department and provided the young mayor with specific instructions on how to reform the troubled police force. Community-based policing was the association’s primary recommendation. While the report admitted that this required training, planning, retraining, public education, and, most important, a change in the departmental culture, the consultants were confident that it could be achieved. More specifically, the report also recommended raising the standards for new recruits, limits on paid details and outside employment, pub- “A New Day in Babylon” 221 lic housing policing, integrity training, separate office space for the internal affairs division, and a national search for a new police chief.1 After his election, Morial received a $1.26 million federal grant to hire more officers and for other innovative programs. He then announced a major crime initiative to add police, training, citywide curfews, and more recreational programs. In the plan labeled “New Sheriff in Town,” Morial promised a hundred more police officers added to street patrols, mobile NOPD stations to target high-crime areas, a gun buy-back program, and conflict resolution training for NOPD officers. While these were excellent ideas, Morial’s supporters and existing officers were more concerned with the choice of a new superintendent.2 TheformationofaPoliceSuperintendentSearchCommitteewaslaunched by Morial shortly after taking office. Reverend Harold Mayberry, pastor of Payne Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church, and business leader Ralph Brennan chaired the committee. The committee was assisted by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington think tank on the “leading edge of modern police management research.” After a grueling six-monthlong search to find a new chief, the young Morial settled on an outsider from Washington, D.C., forty-seven-year-old Richard Pennington, a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. The twenty-six-year veteran and deputy chief of the Washington Police Department assumed control of the 1,475-member NOPD on October 14, 1994, at a salary of $92,000, approximately $30,000 more than that of his predecessor. “Superintendent Pennington was simply the best. Insider, outsider, male, female, black white, Northerner, Southerner . He was the best because he combined the qualities that I saw in a variety of individuals in one package.” Morial was particularly impressed with the breadth of Pennington’s experience. While in Washington Pennington worked in almost every aspect of policing, including stints as a patrol officer , head of homicide, district commander, robbery detective, recruiter, and budget director. Morial stated that his experience in the nation’s capital “represents know-how, it represents ability, it represents command performance .” Pennington fit the profile that Morial was looking for in a chief: an experienced African American from the outside with a solid track record. But Pennington was not Morial’s first choice. Both Joseph Leake, head of New York City’s Housing Authority, and Clarence Bradford, an assistant chief with the Houston Police Department, turned him down. In addition to the Pennington appointment, Morial also named former Chief Joseph Giarrusso as commissioner of criminal justice for the city of New Orleans.3 222 Black Rage in New Orleans As expected, rank-and-file officers of the NOPD greeted Pennington with...