Excerpt
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): For years, the New Orleans Police Department has labored under a long shadow of misconduct, investigations, charges and criminal convictions. Now the city has agreed to major reforms.
New Orleans now faces a sweeping federal mandate, to reform a police department plagued by corruption and abuse for decades.
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: This consent decree will allow us to move forward, and move forward together, and will enable the people of New Orleans to have, in the words of Mayor Landrieu -- and I quote him -- a world-class police department.
GWEN IFILL: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder formally outlined the deal yesterday, an agreement Mayor Mitch Landrieu estimates will cost roughly $11 million a year to put in place. Landrieu said it will fundamentally change the culture of the New Orleans police once and for all.
The planned reforms include mandatory training for officers in the use of force, routine stops and searches and bias-free policing, new standards for recruiting to increase diversity on the force, and videotaping of interrogations involving suspected homicides and sexual assaults. The department must also install video cameras in all patrol cars.
ERIC HOLDER: This consent decree belongs to the entire community and includes ideas that were brought to us by community members, front-line officers and experts alike.
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