Number of NOPD officers around 1000. Only 60 NOPD worked Boo Parade. Needed 90

Fox8

torney for the Police Association of New Orleans, Eric Hessler, says the city didn’t have enough officers sign up to work details for the parade. To compensate, the NOPD had to pull two officers from each district, a total of 14 officers, to work the route. Still, that wasn’t enough and the entire Canal Street portion of the route was cut out.

“This was a private organization putting on a parade, so they had detail officers that would be paid by the organization to staff the parade route. From what I’m being told, there weren’t enough officers that elected to work the detail,” says Hessler.

There are about 1,000 NOPD officers, according to Hessler. He says that number is critically low and could affect the coverage of large events in the future.

Boo Captain Brian Kern says there were not enough officers to work along the parade route.

“The detail I was told required about 90 police officers,” Kern said. “They only had around 60 available.”

Fraternal Order of Police attorney Donovan Livacarri estimates 125 officers have left the force since the beginning of the year.

He says at the same time there have been less than 50 new hires.
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