Jackson Jambalaya

Note: I posted this a long time ago but since we are going to have a new Mayor, this is still relevant. If I was advising Harvey I would say stay away from JPD officers, anyone from law enforcement in Mississippi, and repeat what you did in hiring Moore as JPD Chief. Resumes and track records don't lie and the NYPD has been turning out some leaders that have become successful chiefs elsewhere. Mayor-elect Johnson should take a serious look at this idea.

Last week I wrote a post about reforming JPD by hiring outsiders with no connections to JPD or Mississippi as leadership positions opened. This article in City Journal examined how many police departments nationwide are hiring NYPD officials to lead their departments with much success:
"Since the late 1990s, more than 18 police commanders have left the New York City police department to run their own agencies elsewhere.....
the diaspora also includes lesser-known young Turks who rose quickly through the NYPD’s ranks during the paradigm-shattering 1990s. Now, as chiefs in their own right, they’re proving the efficacy of analytic, accountable policing in agencies wholly dissimilar from New York’s—in one case, achieving success beyond anything seen in Gotham or elsewhere.....
he moved to a very different city. East Orange, New Jersey, has 70,000 citizens by official counts, about 95 percent of them black, and deep pockets of poverty. Crime there—much of it violent—had started skyrocketing in 1999, reaching a per-capita rate in 2003 that was 14 times that of New York City and five times that of Detroit. East Orange’s mayor recruited Cordero to quell the violence; Cordero started work in 2004. The results were astonishing. By the end of 2007, major felonies had dropped 68 percent, and homicides 67 percent, from their 2003 high—possibly a national record. (By comparison, from 1993, the year before Bratton arrived in New York City, through 1997, major felonies in New York dropped 41 percent and homicides 60 percent.) East Orange’s remarkable experience should give pause to criminologists, who too often ascribe crime drops to anything but policing reforms......" Story

We have stuck with these dysfunctional retreads leading JPD for far too long. Hopefully the next adminstration will take the bull by the horns and hire some true leadership that has no connections to this area as other cities have done with these NYPD alumni. As long as we put up with the good ole boy crap, we will continue to get the crime rate we deserve.