Ronal Serpas is an excellent choice for NOPD police chief
As a civilian tech who supported the New Orleans Police Department COMSTAT process during the reform period of Superintendent Richard Pennington, I experienced firsthand the leadership exhibited by Ronal Serpas on a weekly basis for three years. While Pennington was setting the high-overview priorities to reform the NOPD (in partnership with federal authorities and change consultants) Serpas implemented policies on a day-to-day basis that elevated the stature of the department to an internationally-recognized model for professionalization and crime reduction.
Throughout his career as a police chief at the NOPD, Washington State Police, and Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, Serpas used statistics as a practitioner of a “trust-but-verify” approach to policing, using random integrity checks to ensure professionalization throughout the ranks under his command. Fully one-third of the NOPD was replaced with better and more qualified officers. One measure of his success was the fact that 911 calls for service in New Orleans actually increased under Serpas — an indicator that the community’s confidence was increasing that when they called with an emergency, a professional, courteous, responsive officer would show up to help.
At the NOPD, Serpas governed the COMSTAT accountability process to reduce violent crime, cutting the murder rate in half during the 1990s from a peak of over 400 in 1994.
Serpas acquired a Ph.D. in Urban Studies, and was often teased by peers for being so bookish, but he developed an intellectual veneer that distinguished and separated him from his peers. By his example, and with a strict but professorial demeanor, Serpas demanded performance excellence and professional conduct from everyone in a command position, on down to the basic traffic cop.
In the years since his post as second in command at the NOPD, Serpas has continued to advance in his thinking and practice of police department administration. He is one of the most qualified candidates for police chief in America, and his familiarity with New Orleans’ culture will truly prove to be an asset.
It’s going to be a difficult task to reform the NOPD, and reduce crime, but Serpas has already demonstrated that he can do the job. He’ll also have the help of federal officials, and a new Independent Police Monitor.
The Police Chief Task Force has served New Orleans well, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu has made an excellent choice, by choosing Ronal Serpas to be the next New Orleans Police Department Superintendent.
Ronal Serpas will again make us proud of our NOPD.
