Fraternal Order of Police

Crescent City Lodge No. 2 (LA 002) 

The below article was submitted for publication by an NOPD Detective who is a member of the Fraternal Order of Police, Crescent City Lodge.  We believe it will speak to many of our brothers and sisters and should be read by many in our community. 

NOPD - Bleeding Out

An editorial by an NOPD Detective

We're bleeding out.  Plain and simple.  That's what the doctors would call it. Uncontrolled hemorrhaging that is killing the body.  Bleeding out.  Losing the essential means for life and sustaining oneself.   That's what our department is doing right now.  And it's doing it to itself. 

Once I saw a joke sticker on my mother's desk at work that read, "The beatings will continue until morale improves," with a skull and crossbones behind it.  I often wonder how the humor of the sticker seems to have become the sad reality for our department at the present time.  When I think of that sticker in adult life two things come to mind.  An old Army saying I learned when I was in..."mess with me, but don't mess with my money," and the fact that that is exactly what we as a department are experiencing.  Then I honestly have to ask myself how long I can hold out?  How long can any of us hold out?

The majority of the best police I have ever had the pleasure to serve with have either left, are in the process of leaving, or have plans to leave.  Some are going to other agencies, and some are leaving the job all together, so sickened, beaten down, or just plain worn out by their experiences here.  I can literally count on two hands the ones I would consider the best that are still around.  And it's not for lack of love for the job, or the city, and citizens they...we...swore to serve. 

Even I am beginning to look elsewhere, and it pains me to do so.  

I love this city.  I love this department.   I've spent nearly my whole life in one, and nearly a decade in the other.  I have seen, witnessed and been a part of the ups and downs of both.   

I'm proud to an almost indescribable point to say that I am NOPD.   I'm part of a department that handles events and situations that no other department has ever been able to or had to handle.   

I love carnival and the chance it gives us to interact.  I genuinely love to know that I am helping or making a difference.  We get to do things and experience things no other officers or detectives in any other agency ever do.   

I made it through the storm.  I spent the first week of Katrina in the Superdome.  Through all of the tragedy, and through such intense and emotional times, never once did the thought of leaving cross my mind, or the minds of those I served with. An experience no one in any other agency could ever say they had.  No enormous moment like that to have to rise to, no other agency has ever responded to, that the NOPD did.  Through a storm and tragedy of that magnitude, so many stayed and shined and drove on, only to see them fading away and drifting off now.   

Yet I feel that we are being run off, or slowly drained away.   

If it weren't for the guys I work with, I may already have been one of them.  That and stubborn pride, but mainly the unit.  I've thankfully always been lucky in those.  Always serving in solid, tight knit, close units with great people;  and ones that every now and then just happened to make good headlines for jobs well done.  Units with guys that know what a team is, and how a team, a unit, a family should be.  A lot of the department has not been so fortunate.  And even those who have, that find themselves suddenly without, tend to be leaving when they wind up there.  The rest of us, lowering our heads, setting our shoulders a bit more, and trying our best to continue trudging forward.  But I can't say I don't understand that their reasons are their own.  One of the best Lieutenants I've ever known taking a pay cut to Deputy status, just to go work somewhere else, as the right choice for he and his.  One of the best detectives I knew doing the same.  Another of the best I knew retiring, versus working under the current conditions.  A wealth of knowledge lost to the city with each departure.  I could name so many others. 

It's a loss that doesn't need to be.  It's a hemorrhage that could easily be stopped.  By the simple use of common sense.  Simple changes, that could act as a tourniquet.  Applying logic and necessary legislative action as the stitches; and improved conditions as the healing and growing process.  Raise the pay, and standard of living, and you can raise the standard of retention and hiring.  Raise the standard in general.  Raise both and you'll breed as well as keep the best of them.  As opposed to bleeding them out to other places and agencies, as the department is now.  As opposed to their understandable flight from, at times, third world conditions. 

Me, I'm not calling myself the brightest or best, but I can say I'm feeling the bleeding.  I have a hand over it, and I'm doing my best to apply firm pressure.  I want to stay and stick with it.  There's that damn stubborn pride in what I do and where I do it...who I do it for.  There's the guys, the unit, the family I serve with now, those I have served with before, all of whom I would sooner die for than let down.  I have that unit pride, for as long as the current decline will allow that to last.  Yet I'm also not saying that I don't feel my grip weakening, and the weight of the things pressing down on me as well; my gaze going elsewhere.  Likely much faster were it not for them.  Following my other brothers and sisters, and wondering if they might have had better sense than I, to have gone elsewhere.  Or that perhaps they simply didn't want to take the beatings anymore. 

But...I'm hoping not to bleed out just yet.   I'm trying my best.  

And, I'm hoping really...really hard.