CHIEF PENNINGTON'S WATCH

Richard Pennington's tenure as New Orleans police chief ends far more
tranquilly than it began in 1994, when he arrived in a city where crime and
the Police Department were out of control.

The contrast between then and now speaks volumes about what Mr. Pennington
has accomplished. He cleaned up a scandal-ridden department where officers
had made headlines for everything from protecting drug dealers to murder.
And on his watch, the murder rate, which had hit a frightening high point
of 421, was cut in half.

Mr. Pennington didn't accomplish these profound changes alone. He had the
help of the New Orleans Police Foundation, which provided money and
expertise to help revamp the department. And he served under a mayor who
was determined to stem the wave of violence that was drowning the city.

But Mr. Pennington was the leader who made change possible. That's why he
encountered rounds of applause from other diners when he went out to eat.
And it's why his hiring is considered the signal accomplishment of Marc
Morial's administration.

The Police Department that veteran officer Eddie Compass takes over today
has been rescued from the lawless element that had overrun it. Mr.
Pennington booted out 300 officers and created the Public Integrity
Division, which worked with the FBI to rehabilitate the department's good name.

He cut down on outside assignments, created a new complaint procedure for
civilians and promoted professionalism.

Without the dramatic turnaround at NOPD, it's hard to see how New Orleans
could have overcome the chokehold that violence had on the city. But Mr.
Pennington didn't just clean up the department, he also made it more effective.

Turning to New York as the model, Mr. Pennington went to the same
consultants who engineered that city's crime-fighting plan. The system in
place today uses computers to track crime trends so that police can quickly
develop strategies to quash them.

New Orleans has gone from being the murder capital of the United States to
being an example of effective crime-fighting that's mentioned in the same
breath as New York.

Granted, the fall in crime tracked a national trend and owes something to
the ebbing of the crack cocaine epidemic. But the reversals in New Orleans
were dramatic and outstripped the national decline. The change is palpable.
People who were afraid in 1994 feel safer today.

That doesn't mean the job is over, of course. Murders have been creeping
back up in the past two years, and the emergence of heroin as the drug of
choice poses much the same kind of threat that crack did in the 1990s. The
Police Department is vastly improved, but it managed to hit its optimum
staffing level of 1,735 only briefly. Attracting and retaining good
officers is still a challenge.

But Chief Compass will be able to address those challenges without the
burden of corruption and runaway crime that his predecessor faced.

That's thanks, in large part, to Mr. Pennington, and we should all be grateful.