The surprise announcement Tuesday that Police Superintendent Michael Harrison will leave for Baltimore creates an opportunity for Mayor LaToya Cantrell to put her personal stamp on policing in New Orleans.
Yet as many of her predecessors have discovered, picking a police chief is one of the most consequential and potentially fraught decisions a big city’s mayor can make.
In New Orleans, Cantrell faces the twin challenges of tackling a high violent crime rate and complying with the 2012 federal consent decree, a broad slate of reforms the city agreed to implement after a scathing federal report detailed corruption, brutality and bias across the police force.
Several names are already being mentioned as potential replacements for Harrison. Whoever Cantrell picks will be tasked with extending a decline in homicides that reached a 47-year low in 2018, while convincing a federal judge that the department has met the bar for implementing lasting reforms.
Harrison’s successor will also be expected to address two crime categories that experienced double-digit increases last year: car burglaries and thefts.
A mayoral spokesman said Cantrell hopes to choose the new chief quickly.
“The mayor is engaged in the process of selecting the next (permanent) chief. We expect to make that announcement prior to Chief Harrison’s departure,” said Beau Tidwell, the spokesman.
That doesn’t give Cantrell much time. Harrison will begin serving in Baltimore on an interim basis by the end of January, news outlets there reported. He must still be approved by the Baltimore City Council for the permanent job.
Cantrell, by contrast, needs no such approval from council members. Her selection will be a highly personal one, said former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who plucked Harrison from his post as commander of the sprawling 7th District in New Orleans East in August 2014, after Ronal Serpas resigned as chief.
“It is really an important decision, but it’s very personal to a mayor. Whoever she chooses has got to be someone that has her full confidence,” Landrieu said.
Cantrell has not said whether she plans to search across the country for Harrison’s permanent replacement, or mainly look within the NOPD and perhaps the state.
However, insiders are already ticking off a short list of names stocked with local candidates, most from within the department.
Flanked by New Orleans Police Deputy Superintendent Paul Noel, left, Superintendent Michael Harrison, and Deputy Chief John Thomas, right, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu speaks by the eternal flame memorial for fallen New Orleans Police Officers as he explains that the white supremacist Battle of Liberty Place monument, which was removed earlier in the morning, actually celebrates the killing of New Orleans Metropolitan Police during Reconstruction in an…
