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Cantrell,Hutsonmesswith bulls,gethorns

MAYOR LATOYA CANTRELL NO DOUBT BELIEVEDSHE WAS TAKINGTHE BULL BYTHE HORNS

when she recently blamed a federal consent decree for the recent spike in cops leaving NOPD — and then filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan to terminate the decree. On Aug. 17, Cantrell learned what happens when you mess with the bull.

A day later, Sheriff Susan Hutson likewise “got the horns” from U.S. Magistrate Michael North over her efforts to work around his repeated demands, beginning almost two years ago under a separate federal consent decree, that the city and the sheriff immediately begin building a stand-alone healthcare facility as part of the local jail that Hutson runs. There’s scant evidence of any progress on that front.

Cantrell and Hutson inherited their respective consent decrees, and both have promised to comply in order to end them. Hutson, however, also pledged to try to “retrofit” the existing jail rather than build a separate healthcare facility. During her campaign, she gave no specifics as to how she would get around the court’s order to build a stand-alone facility, proving Mario Cuomo’s famous quip that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose.

Neither Cantrell nor Hutson appeared at federal court hearings on their respective consent decrees last week, which the judge and magistrate, respectively, doubtless took as a lack of respect. The jurists’ comments and rulings offer a pair of master classes in judicial woodshedding.

Only months ago, Morgan praised NOPD’s progress in meeting the decree’s requirements and dangled the possibility that the department might soon become eligible for a two-year “sustainment” period with reduced monitoring. Morgan struck a different note this/last week.

Without mentioning the city’s motion to lift the decree, and without calling out Cantrell by name, Morgan deftly turned the tables on Heronner, saying the administration had failed to implement a “holistic plan to deal with the current emergency.”

To drive home her point, Morgan ordered extra audits, monthly hearings to track NOPD’s progress, and more intense monitoring of the department. She added that NOPD has backslid in areas that she previously considered satisfied, but she made a point of adding, “I do not say this to criticize the men and women who continue to toil in the NOPD trenches. I will make sure you get what you need to continue this job.”

North took a more in-yourface approach with Hutson. He accused the new sheriff of trying to circumvent a court order to build the new medical facility at the jail and of operating in secrecy after she failed to notify him of recent violence, deaths and a three-day protest at the jail. “Not a word. Silence. Crickets,” North said during a special conference he called in response to Hutson’s alleged secrecy.

North also fumed that the sheriff, herself an attorney, failed to attend the hearing. “What we need is a course correction, and we needed it yesterday,” he said.

The lesson to both Cantrell and Hutson couldn’t be plainer: Don’t mess with the bulls.

PHOTO BY MAX BECHERER / THE TIME S-PICAYUNE Sheriff SusanHutson