Mistrust in law enforcement complicates the search for the New Orleans jail escapees

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — As authorities scour New Orleans for escapees from an audacious jailbreak, they are also confronting entrenched mistrust in law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

Nearly a week after 10 inmates yanked open a faulty cell door inside a city jail and moved the toilet to squeeze through a hole, five remain on the lam. The police superintendent has said most of the fugitives were likely still in the city as more than 200 law enforcement personnel work to find them.

Complicating efforts is a history of misconduct and racial bias against Black people by city police, a state police record of excessive force, and a jail system found to violate constitutional rights.

Officials raised concerns that the men are receiving help from the community after two people were booked Wednesday on accessory charges. Authorities have offered $20,000 in rewards for tips leading to the arrest of the fugitives, many of whom were charged with or convicted of violent offenses including murder.

“If we feel like the law enforcement was here to help us, we would help them,” said Mario Westbrook, 48. He realized only after the arrest of escapee Dkenan Dennis that he had unknowingly spoken with the fugitive that day outside a corner store.

Westbrook compared the rush to capture Dennis near Westbrook’s home with the often hourslong law enforcement response times in his neighborhood in New Orleans East, a long-marginalized stretch of the majority-Black city.

“Our community, the police come back here, they have no respect for us as human beings,” Westbrook said.

While dropping off a package near where police had cordoned off streets before capturing escapee Corey Boyd, delivery driver Brandy Peters, 36, said she was surprised authorities caught anyone “because normally crime here goes unsolved.”

“If you ask me, they lean more toward the French Quarter area, protecting and serving there more, making sure that when people come from out of town, that’s where they are at,” she said of law enforcement.

Police say they are improving

In a statement to The Associated Press, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill described law enforcement as doing “an amazing job in building trust and relationships in the communities they serve” and working to apprehend “violent and dangerous” escapees.

The New Orleans Police Department, which tells the public it has transformed, referred questions to Louisiana State Police, saying it is leading the search.

The agency “continues to work diligently on improving our relationship with our communities,” state police spokesman Lt. Jared Sandifer wrote in an email. He added that “all residents are encouraged to cooperate with law enforcement” to capture the fugitives.

The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, did not respond to requests for comment.

Police history of racial bias and misconduct

By all accounts, the New Orleans Police Department has seen drastic improvement over the past decade.

It has been subject to what the city called found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity. It was one of the first major police forces in the U.S. to implement body cameras.

But residents are five times as likely to hold a negative view of city police as a positive one, a 2024 survey by the New Orleans Crime Coalition found.

Some still recall the bullet-riddled early 1990s, when officers were often the very criminals preying on the city. Dozens of officers were arrested for bank robbery, rape, auto theft and other crimes as New Orleans led the country in police brutality complaints.

The low point was arguably 1994, when New Orleans recorded an unprecedented 421 homicides and saw the patrolman-ordered execution of a young woman, Kim Groves, who was escapee Derrick Groves’ grandmother.

Years later, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 20 officers were charged in a series of civil rights investigations. Officers shot and killed two unarmed people and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge in 2007 before orchestrating a cover-up.

Security problems and violence in New Orleans’ jail

City Councilmember Freddie King III lamented during a public meeting this week that several escapees were first locked up as teenagers and remained entangled in the criminal justice system as adults.

“Are we doing enough as a society, as a city, to ensure that our young, specifically Black men, don’t end up in jail?” he said.

For more than a decade, New Orleans’ jail had been subject to federal monitoring intended to improve conditions.

Security problems and violence persisted even after the Orleans Justice Center opened in 2015, replacing a decaying prison with its own string of escapes and deaths.

“There’s bad blood and history of bad blood toward Orleans Parish incarceration systems,” said Stella Cziment, the independent police monitor of New Orleans.

State police operate aggressively

Cziment also observed that residents may be “reluctant” to work with Louisiana State Police, which operates with a heavy hand in the city, including carrying out sweeps of homeless encampments.

The agency has a history of excessive force, detailed earlier this year in a scathing U.S. Justice Department report. On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it was “retracting” the Biden administration’s findings of constitutional violations.

And this month, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a directive to allow the state’s law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law.

“I think in this current political climate, people might want to think twice before putting themselves in a situation where they are unnecessarily interacting with police because our civil liberties may not be respected,” said Toni Jones, chair of New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police, a grassroots police accountability network.

‘Almost like a joke’

Tyler Cross, who lives in the St. Roch neighborhood where a SWAT team unsuccessfully sought a fugitive, sees the jailbreak as indicative of “significant systemic issues” with the city’s law enforcement and criminal justice system.

But amid crumbling infrastructure and frustration over city leadership, residents sometimes just have to laugh, he said. A reliable barometer of the city’s mood, local clothing store Dirty Coast, is selling a T-shirt based on the inmates’ taunt of “To Easy LoL” written above the hole where they escaped.

“It’s almost like a joke, which kind of speaks to how people feel about the police in this area,” Cross said. “The whole situation is just kind of ridiculous.”

Westbrook, the New Orleans East resident, said police have been “very active” in his neighborhood since the escape.

“They’re looking for somebody for real, so you can’t call it harassment,” Westbrook said. “But we still taking the bite of it in the backend.”

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Mustian reported from New York. Associated Press writer Hallie Golden in Seattle also contributed.