In response to a cry for help from the newly minted Mayor, the Justice Department announced Monday that it will conduct an evaluation of the New Orleans Police Department to figure out reforms for the troubled agency, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, attending a news conference in New Orleans with Mayor Mitch Landrieu and other officials, said the assessment will start immediately, the paper reported.
The paper reported that Perez wrote a letter to Landrieu saying the Justice Department will “examine allegations of excessive force, unconstitutional searches and seizures, racial profiling, failures to provide adequate police services to particular neighborhoods and related misconduct.”
“We already have boots on the ground right now. We will spend a lot of time here in the weeks and months ahead in the city of New Orleans,” Perez said, according to the paper.
Shortly after taking office,Landrieu asked the Justice Department to examine the police department. News of the assessment was first reported on Friday by the website Main Justice.
The department has been plagued by problems and tarnished lately by guilty pleas of officers involved in covering up the infamous Danziger Bridge police shootings after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that left two people dead and four injured.
The community distrust of the department has a been a running problem.
