Periodically, I like to take a moment to make sure people are up to speed on the status of formal disciplinary investigations for NOPD and the benefits provided by the FOP Legal Defense Plan.

The federal consent decree entered into by the City of New Orleans and the Dept. of Justice requires that complaint classification be “allegation-based” as opposed to “outcome-based.”  That has been interpreted to mean that whatever the allegation is, even if it is extraordinarily unlikely or impossible, that allegation will be investigated.  While I disagree that the consent decree requires a full, formal investigation into every allegation, the current interpretation results in that conclusion.  The end result is that every complaint, no matter how insignificant, is likely to result in a formal disciplinary investigation.

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