NEW ORLEANS – A federal judge has the consent decree covering the New Orleans Police Department, marking the end of federal court oversight.
The Justice Department and the City of New Orleans jointly moved to terminate the consent decree in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana based on NOPD’s successful implementation of reforms related to use of force, crisis intervention, stops, searches, arrests and other areas.
“We are proud to recognize the New Orleans Police Department’s sustained progress and commitment to constitutional policing,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said. “We credit the officers and supervisors who have transformed NOPD — despite local political obstacles — and who continue to work to keep communities safe.”
Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Michael M. Simpson agreed.
“We join our Justice Department colleagues in the Civil Rights Division in applauding the collaborative efforts with the NOPD that have resulted in today’s termination,” he said. “The NOPD’s reforms have already borne many good fruits in our community. There can be no question that our city is safer, and our police department is better, as a direct result of this case.”
In 2012, the Justice Department completed an investigation into NOPD under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. In 2013, the DOJ and the city entered into a consent decree to address the investigation’s findings that NOPD engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This January, the district court granted the parties’ joint motion for approval of a sustainment plan to ensure the durability of NOPD’s reforms, recognizing that today’s NOPD “is a far different agency from the one that spawned DOJ’s investigation in 2011 and the imposition of the Consent Decree in 2013.”
Resolution of the NOPD case marks the seventh police reform matter — some court consent decrees and some out-of-court agreements — that the DOJ has been able to resolve so far in 2025. In each of these matters, the DOJ has worked with law enforcement agencies around the country to implement reforms to better serve Americans and return control to local authorities.
