The following was recently received from an active NOPD officer in response to our recent Letter to the Editor regarding the planned changes to the NOPD detail system.

I would like to invite and encourage anyone who would like to share their thoughts on police details to submit something to be published. It can be about these so-called “reforms” or it can be your personal experience working paid details with how the detail impacted the community we serve. It could also be about how working paid details has impacted your family.

I would also like to strongly encourage anyone who works details to ask their detail employer to contribute their personal experiences with paid details and how it effected their business or event.

I will be happy to give the author credit for the article or post it anonymously at the author’s direction. Furthermore, I will refrain from editing (except maybe spacing for readability). You are welcome to submit something even if you do not work for NOPD. Email me or call me about submitting something — Donovan Livaccari dlivaccari@gmail.com; dal@livlaw.com; 504-905-8280; or click Contact Me.

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I’ve always wanted to be a Police Officer, for as long as I can remember, and my dream came true in 2004. I was so proud to wear the uniform and serve the citizens of New Orleans, and I still am, to a degree. We Police Officers put our lives on the line everyday and never complain about it, and this is the treatment we get? I work hard to make the small amount of money I make and work diligently and quietly with broken equipment, vehicles that break down every other day, and copy machines that don’t work.  Yet I still rise every morning and put this uniform on.

My permanent detail has sustained me and my family for 5 years now. Without it, I couldn’t  pay my mortgage, my car note, or buy the medication that my disabled father needs. You see, it’s not about us as individuals.  There are other people who solely depend on us to care for them.

The media and public fail to recognize or acknowledge the great sacrifice we Police make everyday, they somehow forget that we’re human too. God knows that my world and the world of so many other Officers will be turned upside down when or if this reform takes place. Some of us will lose homes and cars at an alarming rate, and it frightens me.

I am truly saddened and appalled by this and I pray that someone hears our cry. We took and oath to protect and serve this City and someone, somewhere should stop this.

Anonymous disheartened Officer

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