New Iberia Mayor Freddie DeCourt speaks to a group of people about the newly formed city police department. ‘It is an interesting time in city government,’ he says. ‘Things are happening, and I’m glad to be mayor.’

New Iberia’s first chief of police in more than a decade held his first neighborhood watch meeting Monday night in the library at Daspit Elementary School. 

Todd D’Albor, the recently named chief of police for the new New Iberia Police Department, met with Acadian Acres Neighborhood Watch members Monday evening, stressing many of the themes he and New Iberia Mayor Freddie DeCourt have stressed in their efforts to recreate a city police department. 

D’Albor said his principal mission is gaining the trust of the communities he will be policing, describing a philosophy built around community engagement. 

“That is the secret sauce — the blueprint for success,” D’Albor said. “I learned a long time ago, I’m here to listen and hear your concerns.”  

D’Albor repeated a scenario he has described as a pet peeve of his to New Iberians before. He said he’ll sometimes see a police officer enter a store or a restaurant where a young child is horsing around, only to have a parent grab the child at the sight of the officer, telling them to quit horsing around in the presence of police. He said that should not be anybody’s reaction to seeing a public servant whose mission is to protect and serve. 

“Protect is what officers are trained to do every day,” he said. “But serving is where you show your heart. When an officer puts his uniform on in the morning, the first thought should be, ‘How am I going to help someone today,’ not, ‘Who am I going to arrest,’” D’Albor said, noting what he’ll be looking for in new hires is “the heart and compassion to go out and to serve.”

He said community policing has been lacking from the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, and that it will be a primary focus for his department. 

“We need to break this divide. It’s not us versus them. We’re one,” he said. Officers have to let people know they can talk to them. “Officers aren’t just there to put you in jail.” 

D’Albor also placed a high value on the accountability of department personnel. 

“Mistakes get made,” he said, but “integrity is paramount.”

Lloyd Verret, who formed the Acadian Acres Neighborhood Watch 5 1/2  years ago, asked if city police would be able to continue sharing crime data the way the Sheriff’s Office has. D’Albor said yes, and with new technology it can offer enhanced mapping statistics and enhanced data. 

Another attendee asked if D’Albor’s officers will be prepared to deal with encountering people with mental illness. D’Albor said at his previous post in Jennings he had licensed mental health professionals come in to train officers on de-escalation in those situations, which he would implement here, too.  

D’Albor was the chief of police for the city of Jennings from August 2010 until December 2017, when he left that office to help DeCourt begin rebuilding a police department in New Iberia. 

He said he saw similar problems in Jennings when he began there that New Iberia faces now. There was a rise in shootings and a “rash of homicides,” he said, including the infamous ‘Jeff Davis 8’ murders — a string of eight unsolved murders of women in Jennings between 2005 and 2009, just before D’Albor arrived. 

“That’s what I walked into over there,” D’Albor said. “I had to gain the trust of that community.” 

He said crime statistics from the last year in Jennings are some of the best he has ever seen, insisting Jennings is, if not the safest city in the state, one of the “top three” safest.

“This is a historic moment for the city, and I am just so excited,” Maybel Onellion said. “To me it’s exciting to see this department formed.” 

“It is a process,” said DeCourt, who also spoke at the meeting. “It is a lot of steps. We are starting completely from scratch.

“We have an opportunity to do the right thing, to get crime out of here and to get the city safe again,” he said. “It is an interesting time in city government. Things are happening, and I’m glad to be mayor.”