Earlier this week New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell announced a new chief for the New Orleans Police Department, and it wasn’t Michelle Woodfork, the semi-incumbent interim chief most thought would get the job. Instead, Cantrell pulled in Anne Kirkpatrick, who has been counting a $1.5 million wrongful termination settlement from the city of Oakland which was paid out to her after she was sacked in 2020.
Kirkpatrick was the police chief in Spokane, Washington for six years prior to her tenure in Oakland.
Perhaps this is an example of failing up, or perhaps it’s an example of hiring a retread, or perhaps police chiefs are like basketball coaches – they’re going to get fired eventually even if they’re good.
There was some consternation when Kirkpatrick was let go in Oakland, which is perhaps encouraging…
Statement by Oakland police officers association moments after the police commission voted to fire OPD Chief Anne Kirkpatrick. Looks like they knew this was coming. pic.twitter.com/ohLhFRgXXJ
— Scott Morris ☀️ (@OakMorr) February 21, 2020
And it ought to be noted that during Kirkpatrick’s three years running the Oakland PD, crime did tick down to an extent. Since her departure it has gone completely through the sky – so much so that a few weeks ago the local NAACP staged a protest over how violent the streets of that city have become.
Maybe that means Kirkpatrick blew up the police department and three years later there was nothing left of it. Or maybe she was the last thing holding it together.
There isn’t much to hold together where the NOPD is concerned. It isn’t a viable police force, and New Orleans is essentially a jungle of crime. What Kirkpatrick can do to fix anything is actually fairly limited; after all, there’s a district attorney in the city who time and again refuses to actually prosecute criminals, and Jason Williams isn’t likely going anywhere. To beat him means trying to raise a good million dollars, because he’s got the backing of left-wing wrecker deluxe George Soros and his unlimited resources devoted to corrupting big-city judicial systems.
Kirkpatrick is talking about a couple of things – getting New Orleans out from under the consent decree Mitch Landrieu signed with the Eric Holder Justice Department more than a decade ago, which is the proximate cause of the NOPD’s demise as a real police force, and staffing the force back up to something akin to adequate strength to deal with the criminal element. And those sound good; they’re the two things which must be done to tamp crime down.
Assuming the DA and the city’s judges are interested in putting the criminals behind bars, that is, which is a big and not all that warranted assumption.
But before she can even get there, she has to find four votes on the New Orleans City Council to confirm her, and according to a Fox 8 report yesterday…that might not be an automatic.
Council member Freddie King said his office already was fielding calls in the first hours after the announcement was made. “From what I’ve been hearing, a move like this would not be beneficial to the morale of the officers and the morale of the people in the city who feel like things are going in the right direction,” King said. Councilman Oliver Thomas said Kirkpatrick would not have been his choice for the job, but he will see how the confirmation process goes.
It will be interesting if the Woodfork fans, of which there are several on the City Council, end up blocking Kirkpatrick’s confirmation to essentially force Cantrell to promote the interim chief to the position full-time. And then there is a racial element to this – Woodfork is black; Kirkpatrick is white.
But we’ll find out by Oct. 5, when the confirmation vote is supposed to be held.