Michael Bell, a West End resident, speaks about the importance of community policing at Tuesday’s New Iberia City Council meeting, just before the council voted to approve the hire of Todd D’Albor as the first chief of police in the city’s reconstituted police department.  

Residents packed the small chamber of the New Iberia City Council on Tuesday night to hear comments from — and to offer their own to — the city’s first chief of police in more than a decade. 

The CIty Council confirmed the hiring unanimously. 

Todd D’Albor has been the chief of police in Jennings since 2010. About a year ago, he was set to become the police chief in St. Martinville, his hometown, but, after the St. Martinville City Council voted him in, technicalities related to civil service procedures raised distracting questions. He wound up staying in Jennings. 

Now, D’Albor will return to the Teche Area. He faced a mix of admiring praise and hard-edged questioning before members of the City Council voted to approve his hire.  

“I’m scared you’re so good someone’s gonna try to steal you from us,” Mayor Pro Tem Dan Doerle said. “We’re blessed.”

District 5 Councilwoman Sherry Guidry said she was less than happy with the lack of community input during the hiring and selection process and was concerned that she was being asked to ratify the selection at the same moment she was meeting D’Albor for the first time. She pressed D’Albor for a clearer definition of community policing. 

Throughout the evening, D’Albor stressed his commitment to listening to residents of the communities he’ll police and learning what their concerns are. 

“You’ve got to engage the community and listen to those concerns,” D’Albor told Guidry. “One thing that I don’t believe in is sending police out there just to show force.”

D’Albor said that doesn’t earn trust or respect from a community. 

Guidry also pressed D’Albor on what she saw as evidence of a series of short-term commitments at previous jobs.

D’Albor recalled growing up in St. Martinville and spent much of his free time in New Iberia, considering them two parts of a single town. Early in his career, he said, he followed opportunities as they arose to gain experience but has been committed to Jennings for the last seven years. 

“I’m moving back here. This is home for me, this is my forever” he said. “I’m coming back to stay. I have family land here that I’m on.” 

Other council members questioned him on gun violence, on traffic policing and on break-ins and theft in commercial areas. D’Albor pledged his commitment on each front, describing mandatory check-ins with local businesses on every shift, a focus on combatting speeding violations — especially where children may be present — and a reinvigorated attempt to connect with the residents where violent crime is high, noting Jennings has had zero homicides in the past year. 

Marlon Lewis, City Councilman for District 2, where relations with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies have been most strained, asked pointedly about diversity in the new department. 

“When I think of diversity, I think of a police department that looks like what New Iberia looks like,” Lewis said, adding that too often police have not looked like his constituents.

“But most of the people they are policing look like me,” said the black City Councilman.

He asked what D’Albor would do to hire more black men, to which several women in attendance shouted, “And women!” 

“And women,” Lewis quickly corrected himself. 

“We need to be diverse,” D’Albor said.

“We’re not going to hire anyone because of their race or color,” he said, but declared his commitment to recruiting black men and women to the department. 

“This community does not owe the police their trust. That is something the police have to earn,” D’Albor said several times. “No one owes me trust, I have to earn it. That’s going to be my task every day.” 

Robby Carrier-Bethel was concerned about the difference in size between Jennings and New Iberia. Jennings has a population of 10,000, and there are eight unsolved murders there, she said. New Iberia has a population of a little more than 32,000.

“What will he do differently in the city of New Iberia that he couldn’t get done in Jennings,” Carrier-Bethel asked during a public comment period. 

Still, she said, she is ready for the change.

“A new broom sweeps clean,” she said after the meeting. 

Similarly, Patricia Hypolite voiced some skepticism but a willingness to begin moving forward.

“This isn’t an easy task,” Hypolite said during public comments, citing the heightened levels of gun violence in her neighborhood.

After the meeting, she said she was pleased with D’Albor’s comments. 

“I know his mother,” she said. “I’m looking forward to working with him — and to giving him hell.”  

A long process remains ahead of New Iberia officials as they move forward to create a new police department. Many questions will have to be grappled with, over a long span of time. But in the end, when D’Albor left the podium, the packed room gave a long, loud round of applause.

“One more step and we’re a real department,” Mayor Freddie DeCourt said. “Chief D’Albor will come to work December first.”