ZERO TOLERANCE IS LOSING ITS PUNCH

N.O. Revisits Strategy For Confronting Crime

Eight years ago, the New Orleans Police Department dramatically altered the
way it conducted business, adopting the fashionable "zero tolerance"
approach to crime and flooding the streets with uniformed patrols. Results
were charted through computerized statistics, and the top brass were held
accountable at weekly feet-to-the-fire strategy sessions.

The program was credited with playing a key role in chopping the murder
rate by more than half, from 424 in 1994 to 158 in 1999. But a steady
backslide in those numbers, with 265 murders last year, has tripped alarms
from police headquarters all the way to the mayor's office.

To get a grip on the problem, city officials are preparing for another
round of soul-searching and, if necessary, sweeping changes -- prompted in
part by the notion that the zero tolerance strategy is bogging down police
and prosecutors with too many arrests that don't end up in convictions.

"My question is, is that the best we can do?" Mayor Ray Nagin said
recently. "I think it's time to try and fix our criminal justice system,
and everything should be on the table. One of the things we need to
challenge is the strategy of zero tolerance. Is it the correct strategy for
today's environment, or should we be more targeted?"

In a reprise of tactics from eight years ago, a high-powered consulting
firm has quietly been hired to study the Police Department and help draft a
blueprint for change. In fact, it's the same group that was hired under the
administration of former Mayor Marc Morial and his popular police chief,
Richard Pennington.

John Linder & Associates, based in New York, already is several weeks into
a study of the Orleans Parish district attorney's office. After the group
publishes its findings in a few weeks, the consultants are ready to roll up
their sleeves and wade into the Police Department, according to John Casbon
of the New Orleans Police Foundation, the nonprofit group footing the bill
for the studies. A study by the consulting firm typically costs more than
$100,000, but details on charges for the two studies weren't released.

"If the Pennington Plan was the revolution, this could be revolution part
two," Casbon said. "We're going to break some big news in how this plan is
going to affect the entire criminal justice system."

Arrest-Conviction Gap

At the district attorney's office, the Linder group is about to launch a
version of the accountability system that was adopted by the NOPD eight
years ago: COMSTAT, short for computerized statistics. The system is based
on the same idea as the police version, Linder said, except that it tracks
and evaluates criminal cases instead of criminal offenses.

It was in the course of studying the district attorney's office that the
Linder consultants noticed an alarming gap in the city's justice system.
Despite a record number of arrests by police -- more than 114,000 in 2004
- -- convictions are down and crime remains stubbornly high. The lion's share
of arrests were for drug offenses but the conviction rate on drug charges
was less than 10 percent, Nagin said.

That finding led to a mantra of sorts for revisiting the NOPD's police
strategy: "We can't arrest our way out of the problem." Nagin and Compass
said they view the analysis as an opportunity to calibrate a balance
between the quantity of arrests and the quality of the court cases they
produce.

The study "has sparked a pretty intense dialogue about how to make this
city safe," Nagin said. "Once you look at the volume of arrests and the
number of convictions, you see there's clearly a need for improvement."

Room For Tweaking

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said he welcomes the consultants with
open arms and an open mind.

"Maybe we don't need to make 114,000 arrests," Compass said. "Maybe we need
to look at who we're arresting and what we're arresting them for. We've got
to look at whether our strategies need to be tweaked."

"Tweaked" may end up being an understatement, Compass conceded. Some basic
pillars of the old Pennington Plan could end up being scaled back, he said,
including decentralization and, more significantly, zero tolerance.

Compass said the time is ripe for outside experts. After nearly three years
on the job, he said he now realizes he can't solve the city's crime
problems by "my sheer will and desire to turn the situation around." He
compared his learning curve to that of an NFL quarterback who, after trying
to carry an entire team on his shoulders, learns to win through teamwork
and tactics.

"I was naive," Compass said. "I thought the way I was successful as
district commander could work as chief. But the realization of the
magnitude of this job has sunk in over a three-year period. I realize I
can't do everything on my own."

Changing Circumstances

The primary consultant who will be whispering in Compass' ear is Linder's
partner Louis Anemone, a former top commander with the New York Police
Department. Anemone is well-known in police management circles as the
co-architect of COMSTAT and one of the driving forces in New York's
dramatic crime reductions during the mid-1990s.

As it happens, the cop who launched the COMSTAT concept with Anemone, the
late Jack Maple, was Linder's partner when the firm helped reform the local
police department in 1997. A fast-talking, roly-poly, bow-tie-wearing New
York police legend, Maple pushed many of the NOPD's current police
strategies, including zero tolerance, that are about to be scrutinized.

But times and circumstances have changed, Linder said.

"There's a different type of murder occurring now and a different type of
criminal out there," Linder said.

Compass said concepts such as zero tolerance simply aren't feasible in a
city with an understaffed police department, an overwhelmed district
attorney's office and a historic lack of cooperation between the two agencies.

While the city can't count on corralling more resources for police and
prosecutors, Linder's game plan is to start by getting the police
department and district attorney's office working hand-in-hand. Eventually,
he said, he would like to bring the criminal court judges into the effort
to launch a truly united front against crime.

"The mayor is driving hard to get the entire system to work together,"
Linder said, "and the results could be revolutionary."