[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 119 (Wednesday, July 12, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2344-S2345]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              New Orleans

  Madam President, let me talk about another subject quickly, one of my 
cities, my city of New Orleans. It is iconic. The whole world knows it.
  I have told this story before. I am going to tell it again because it 
illustrates my point.
  My first job in government was with a reform Governor called Governor 
``Buddy'' Roemer. That was at a time when Japan and its economy--it is 
still strong today, but it was rising high and looking good back in the 
late eighties.
  Governor Roemer decided to take a trip to Japan to try to entice our 
Japanese friends to come invest in Louisiana. Governor Roemer came 
back, and he said: Kennedy, you will never believe what happened to me.
  I said: Tell me about it, Governor.
  He said: My first meeting, I was meeting with 50 Japanese 
businesspeople.
  He said: I thought I would break the ice, so I asked all of them, 
``How many of you have been to Louisiana?''
  Governor Roemer said three or four people raised their hands. So then 
he turned to this group of 50 Japanese businesspeople and said: OK. 
Second question, ``How many of you have been to New Orleans?''
  He said 25 people raised their hands.
  My point, of course, is that New Orleans is special. It is special to 
the world. It is special to America. It is special to me. I used to 
live there. My son was raised there for a while. I met my wife there.
  Every State and country in the world would love to have a New 
Orleans. We are 300 years old. We were founded in 1718. We are envied 
for our food, our music, our architecture, our diversity, our dialects, 
our merriment, our festivals, our celebration of life. People in New 
Orleans dance with the music on and without. It is a special city.
  But my city, Madam President, has hit a rough patch. Crime is 
strangling a free people nowhere more than the city of New Orleans. I 
regret to say this, but it is safer to walk down the streets of 
Mogadishu than it is some of the streets in my city of New Orleans.
  I know others are having a crime problem. It doesn't make me feel any 
bit better.
  Last year, New Orleans was the murder capital of the world. We had 
265 people murdered. That is double since 2019. And that doesn't 
include the burglaries and the carjackings and the break-ins and the 
thefts and the other crimes of violence, the rapes, the property 
crimes. Our 9-1-1 program is a mess.
  We are trying to deal with this, but we are not just taking it lying 
down.

[[Page S2345]]

We are right now looking for a new police chief, and we need a good 
one. We need a tried and tested police chief who has experience in a 
big city, and we are in the process of picking a police chief.
  Now, our mayor, who has 2 more years on her term, is in charge of 
picking the police chief. Our new police chief has to be confirmed by 
our city council. But, more importantly than our city council, as 
important as our city council is, our new police chief has to have the 
confidence of the people of Louisiana and the good people of New 
Orleans.
  Our mayor, as is her right, has decided to handle the selection of 
the new police chief herself. She has appointed an outside, third-party 
group to quarterback the selection of the new police chief. That 
outside, third-party group says it has done a nationwide search. It had 
33 applicants for police chief. Apparently--we don't know this for a 
fact--most of them were not interviewed. Six were. And that is all we 
know. That is all we know of one of the most important and maybe the 
most important selection in municipal government in the last decade in 
New Orleans. Our mayor has shared nothing else with us--nothing, zero, 
zilch, nada.
  To her credit, our mayor has been asked why--and, by the way, that 
includes our city council. You would think, since the city council has 
to confirm the new police chief, that our city council would have been 
brought in from day one, but our mayor decided not to do that.
  At a press conference on July 5, our mayor was asked about this 
secrecy, and here is what she said. I am going to quote our mayor, for 
whom I have great respect, because I certainly don't want to put words 
in her mouth. This is what she told the press.
  To the press: I have to say you all have a great way of doing that to 
people. You know you damage people, even though you try to say you are 
doing it fairly. That is not what I want.
  The mayor goes on to say to the press: I don't want to do that for 
those who look at New Orleans as a place that they want to come and 
serve, and I definitely do not want to do that for men and women that 
have responded who are currently serving.
  Now, look, I get it. I know all about the gifts and the gaps of our 
news media. We have an opinion. But you don't have to like or dislike a 
free press to serve your people. And I can assure you, right now in New 
Orleans, parts of which look like a scene out of ``Mad Max,'' that the 
people of New Orleans are vitally interested--not just the press--in 
who our new police chief will be.
  Our mayor has 2 years left to serve. It is going to be a challenge to 
get a police chief to come to New Orleans and serve for 2 years--uproot 
wherever she or he is, come to New Orleans for 2 years with no 
guarantee that a new mayor will reappoint that new police chief. So it 
is going to be a challenge to begin with.
  On top of that, we all in New Orleans have a lot of questions about 
crime in our city and our new police chief. I just jotted down a few. 
We want to know if our new police chief believes in broken-windows law 
enforcement. We want to know if our new police chief--how she or he is 
going to increase police response times.
  We have got great cops in New Orleans. The morale is low. We don't 
have nearly enough of them. But their response times have tripled in 3 
years. I am not blaming it on them, but it is a problem.
  In picking a new police chief, we want to know our new police chief's 
opinion about whether we have enough investigators, about the Federal 
consent decree that we are under. Has it helped? Has it hurt? Is it 
time to ask to get out from under it?
  We want to know if our new program called Ethical Policing Is 
Courageous is working. We launched it with high hopes. Is it working? 
What does our new police chief think about it?
  We want to know what our new police chief thinks about our Adopt-a-
Block Program. Is it working?
  We want to know our police chief's opinion about whether police 
officers--we are trying hard to recruit them, but we are losing them. 
We lost 20 percent in the last 2 years. We want to know how our new 
police chief feels about requiring or not requiring police officers to 
live in the city. Can they live outside, in the suburbs?
  We want to know what our new police chief thinks about computer 
analytics and camera technology and facial recognition technology.
  I can keep going. These are all fair questions. And it is not just 
the press asking, even though the press is entitled to ask; it is the 
people of New Orleans because they are scared, because they love our 
city, because they think it is worth fighting for, because they want 
justice, but they understand that without order, there can be no 
justice.
  So I say to my mayor of New Orleans with all the respect I can 
muster: Please, Mayor, please, Mayor, please, with sugar on top, call a 
press conference. Tell us who has applied. Tell us who didn't make the 
cut. Tell us why they didn't make the cut. Tell us the criteria that 
you and your team used, without an interview, to eliminate them. Tell 
us who the six remaining semifinalists are. Give us their names. Let us 
hear from them. Give us time to look at their record. Give us time to 
ask fair but tough questions. And let's make this decision together 
because we are all going to have to live with it. Please, Mayor, 
please, reconsider your position. Let's do this together.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.