DeCourt stresses the city’s need for tax to fund police dept.

Published 6:00 am Thursday, September 28, 2017

Mayor Freddie DeCourt held the second of three town hall meetings focused on a proposed sales tax to fund a city police department Wednesday night at the Cyr-Gates Community Center in City Park. 

To an audience that was largely, if not entirely, in support of the proposal, DeCourt went through a detailed, item-by-item breakdown of the proposed New Iberia Police Department budget.

“Chief, Assistant Chief, Captain, Lieutenant,” he said, going down the list of the 71-person police force his budget calls for. “Narcotics, juvenile detectives, records clerks, K-9 — one dog. Many law enforcement people tell me we need two dogs. I’m sorry, we’re going to wear that dog out. In the budget, I put one dog,” he said.

The budget ultimately comes to $7.7 million. DeCourt said in creating the budget he consulted with other department budgets, with 100 years worth of city budget records, with police chiefs, state troopers, civil service officials and with the budgets of communities similar in several measures, including size and crime statistics.

“I continue to review and evolve that budget,” he said. “The chamber looked at it, they issued a statement to all members that the budget was in line with other regional departments. I had my CPA look at it, I had the city’s CPA look at it. It has been scrutinized for months.”

DeCourt stressed the primacy of public safety for any community, even if it means a small tax.

“Look, I don’t like taxes — this is tough. I get rocks thrown at my bald head all day,” he said. “Nobody likes taxes, and I don’t either. But we don’t have a choice. The government can only spend what it gets from somebody else.”

He said it’s about drawing “a line in the sand that law enforcement is the most important thing for this community.” 

DeCourt’s plans for a reconstituted NIPD emphasize a community policing approach, in which police officers have neighborhood-specific beats, often in neighborhoods they live in or grew up in and have deep connections with. A large focus is placed on officers’ knowledge of and relationship with the community. The city is currently in a $6.4 million contract with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department to police New Iberia. But, DeCourt stressed, that configuration leaves the city with little accountability over policing — not for the stack of papers he told the crowd represented the record of shootings over the last year-and-a-half, or the current list of unsolved homicides in New iberia. And it would be hard for Louis Ackal’s IPSO to repair the relationships community policing requires after being indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for gross Civil Rights abuses last year. Ackal was cleared by a court in Shreveport last November, but many of the department’s officers were convicted under his leadership.  

“In every other city the mayor is accountable for the police, the council members are responsible for what happens in their district,” he said. “Let me do my job.”

Phil Haney, a member of the PAC Moving Iberia Forward, which is campaigning for the tax to pass, spoke briefly after DeCourt. 

“I can’t think of another city or another town in the state of Louisiana that has a mayor and five city council members who say ‘I want to take more responsibility,’” he said. “Five of the seven city council members have said, ‘Look, I’m getting calls over the place from people who want to know what we can do about public safety.’ And right now, they can only say, ‘We can’t do nothing about it.’” 

The crowd was virtually unanimously in support of the measure. 

Michelle Meche attended the previous town hall, held at the Martin Luther King Center on Sept. 8, and liked what she heard. She was there supporting the mayor Wednesday night. 

“I heard a well put together plan last time,” she said. “I’m in support of this. I’ve been here for 25 years, so I’m aware of what has happened over the last eight or nine years. Crime has increased. We don’t have a dedicated patrol,” she said.

“This is something we all support,” said Reverand Wilfred Johnson, of the Little Zorah Baptist Church in New Iberia. Johnson and other faith leaders run the P.U.S.H. Collaborative. “Our plan is to help the mayor by implementing rehabilitation programs that would assist this,” he said.

Sheriff Ackal has, paradoxically, both voiced support for the NIPD proposal, but not for the half-cent sales tax. There is currently no other proposal to fund a NIPD.  

Early voting runs from Saturday, Sept. 30 to Saturday, Oct. 7. Election day is Oct. 14.