New Orleans Police Chief Shaun Ferguson’s departure comes four months after the city’s mayor called in a team of former NYPD brass to revamp the shrunken force.
By John Simerman Source The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Shaun Ferguson is on his way out as police chief in New Orleans, and sources say Mayor LaToya Cantrell is poised to tap Jonette Williams, a deputy chief, to become the city’s first Black woman leading the department.
Ferguson’s impending retirement is slated for year’s end, City Hall announced in an e-mail Tuesday, and comes after nearly four rocky years at the top of an embattled, shrinking force.
“After 24 years of service in a profession that takes a lot out of the individuals who answer this call, it is time for me to take a step back and place more priority on my family and my own well-being,” the chief said in an email. “I will still be your neighbor and I will always be a part of this city that I love so much.
Ferguson has led an NOPD mired in steep officer losses amid a surge in shootings, murders and carjackings, a tenure that straddled protests over police brutality against Black people in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minnesota.
His departure comes four months after Cantrell, at the urging of business leaders, called in a team of former New York Police Department brass to revamp the shrunken force.
Wings clipped
The move placed former NYPD patrol chief Fausto Pichardo at the operational helm of the NOPD and was widely viewed as clipping Ferguson’s wings.
Publicly, Cantrell trumpeted her support of the chief as calls for his firing grew louder. Critics argued that Ferguson failed to respond to the crime surge with a coherent plan.
In a statement Tuesday, the mayor described Ferguson as “a great leader, a great partner and a great friend.” She said Ferguson “gave this city his very best — the safety and wellbeing of each and every resident and visitor was always his top priority.”
The timing of the announcement, if not news of Ferguson’s exit, irked the mayor’s leading critics. It means that Cantrell could skirt a new city ordinance that takes effect Jan. 1, empowering the City Council to confirm or deny the mayor’s picks to run key departments.
Just last week, at-large City Council member JP Morrell called for Ferguson to go at a budget hearing, to which Ferguson later replied, “I think we need new leadership at the council.”
Council unhappy with timing
Council President Helena Moreno said Tuesday that she received no warning about Ferguson’s resignation. She argued that Cantrell should hold off on naming a replacement and follow the approval process envisioned in a charter amendment that voters easily passed last month.
A pick before Jan. 1, Moreno said, it would be “disingenuous to the candidate, and it’s disingenuous to the people of this city, who overwhelmingly said that they wanted a different type of process.”
Likewise, Morrell said that a quick replacement would amount to “ignoring the will of the public who voted overwhelmingly to have a transparent public process.”
Ferguson was selected in January 2019 without a formal national search or process of public consultation, replacing Michael Harrison, now Baltimore’s top cop.
Council members said a similarly brisk process this time around could place the new chief in rocky political waters. Morrell argued that the NOPD’s recent staffing woes stem from a “lack of faith in the leadership of the department.”
Possible replacement
Williams, a 22-year NOPD veteran, served for years as an NOPD’s spokesperson and worked as a lieutenant in the 5th District after a promotion in 2015. She was promoted again last year to captain, overseeing field duties in the 4th District in Algiers.
Williams, 42, was again promoted in June, this time to her current position. She runs the NOPD’s Management Services Bureau but has never held command of a police district.
Officers within the NOPD credit her fast rise to a pivot by Cantrell’s administration, after allegations emerged last year that another captain on the rise, Sabrina Richardson, was in hot water over alleged payroll fraud involving off-duty work at the Fairgrounds.
Richardson, the former ranking officer in the NOPD’s Public Integrity Bureau, was recently demoted and suspended for four months.
The scandal involving her and a few dozen other officers accused of double-dipping, which includes an ongoing federal investigation, was among several that landed Ferguson in the middle of controversy.
Ferguson often pledged his dedication to the police reforms mandated under a decade-long consent decree with the federal government, but Cantrell has fought in court over the past year to get out of the deal, arguing that the city has already cleared all of the hurdles.
In praising Ferguson, Cantrell cited “serious reductions in crime, such as aggravated assaults, sexual assaults, business and residential burglaries and non-fatal shootings” this year, making no mention of the city’s climbing murder rate.
But Eric Hessler, an attorney for the Police Association of New Orleans, an officer group, suggested City Hall was at least partly to blame for Ferguson’s rough tenure.
“We certainly had high hopes for Chief Ferguson. He came up through the ranks in an old-school way, and he knew policework. We certainly thought he was going to support policework,” Hessler said.
“I think history will show that for whatever reason, the NOPD put a severe slowdown and obstacles in the way of these officers doing aggressive, constitutional policework.”
Hessler argued that “it’s not going to matter who’s appointed the next chief if that’s going to be the way the Police Department is going to be run, through City Hall.”
City Hall did not respond to questions about Williams, or when the mayor expects to name Ferguson’s replacement.
But the mayor is scheduled to give her “State of the City” address at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Gallier Hall, where she plans to “promote unity and speak to the city’s progression,” according to her office.