NEW ORLEANS — Labor shortages often complicate hiring efforts in industry and government alike. Police departments are no exception.
But a lack of officers forced New Orleans, Louisana, to get creative in their approaches to fighting crime.
The 'Big Easy' now relies more heavily on technology, public notices from smartphone apps, and contracted services with third-party vendors to handle tedious work that would otherwise saddle sworn officers with menial tasks and paperwork.
Before a dramatic reduction in violent crime in the early 2000s, "we were the murder capital of the world," Elizabeth Boh, New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation board chair, said.
Boh credited previous police chiefs for delivering dramatic results before Hurricane Katrina wiped out their progress and depleted city resources.
Since then, "we've come down, down, down," Boh said. "We're now under 900 officers."
Journalist Mike Perlstein said when former mayor Mitch Landrieu faced budget shortfalls, he bucked the advice of his police chief and put a freeze on all city new hires, including new cadets.
"It's very hard to get the pipeline of officers flowing once you stop it," he said.
Now, officers are swamped with more calls than they can handle.
"It's a crisis," Perlstein said, with "response time shooting up to the longest in the country. It's a crisis."
Under duress from a depleted department and disastrous delays in emergency response time, the city rolled out a smartphone application that allows local business owners or bystanders to submit 911-style alerts. The entries are complete with pictures and specific complaints. They go directly to emergency responders, along with their precise location. The extra information helps to cut down on tense early moments when an emergency breaks out and reduces the likelihood of confusion between callers.
The city utilized technology to improve police evidence collection in other areas, too.
For example, if no one's around to capture a crime on their smartphone camera, "I have a camera right here," Boh said. "My cameras are hooked up to the Real Time Crime Center."
Unlike systems in St. Louis or Detroit where police staff monitor HD camera feeds installed outside businesses, New Orleans allowed private residents to attach their residential camera feeds to the city's hub to give police a wider surveillance net.
"If anybody calls 911 within a 100-foot radius of my house, it activates them," Boh said. "It sends an alert to the Real Time Crime Center to start looking at my feed."
The installations come with a marginal fee. The non-profit foundation where she works pays to install high-definition cameras in high-crime neighborhoods.
"It's just a tool to help fight crime," she said. "They work in an environment where you've got declining officer numbers, it's the only thing that we can do right now that's going to help us until we get those numbers back up in the force."
The city is also looking to outside help to improve response times for car crashes and traffic safety incidents. After the department saw its workforce dwindle and response times skyrocket, a personal injury lawyer saw an opportunity to lighten the load for officers.
Ethan Cheramie founded On-Scene Services, a company that dispatches retired police officers to the scene of routine fender benders or other car accidents.
Retired officer Brian Frere now patrols city streets at On-Scene Services and watches for alerts to flash across the laptop screen in his marked vehicle.
"It comes on our CAD system as an accident," he said. "We review all of the accidents and if we're in the area or if we're not in an area, we'll click on that and self dispatch ourselves to the call."
He claims he's arrived on the scene within 15 minutes to handle calls that would otherwise take police officers four or five hours to attend to.
Plus, each accident he handles spares officers from filling out paperwork and frees them up for more pressing matters. He says the public feedback has been extremely positive, especially from locals who are used to waiting for hours for police to arrive.
"The joy I see on the person's face when I get there in 15 minutes and they look at their watch and say, 'Man, that was quick.' Then you get a secondary response when I've taken care of everything in 20 minutes."