Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office Announces New Weekly Incident Report Policy and Updates Public on Status of Former Residents of Pod 2E
NEW ORLEANS – Today, the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office announced a new procedure for keeping the public informed on incidents in the Orleans Justice Center.
The Sheriff's Office will publish a weekly "Incident Report" on Fridays to inform the public about non-major incidents that occurred during the week at the Orleans Justice Center. Major incidents will be reported in real-time as details emerge.
"Since taking office, the Sheriff has been leading the task of upgrading the internal computer reporting systems that generate incident reports. Most of the current systems are inefficient and near or at their "end of life". While we procure new, state-of-the-art technology, we are implementing a workaround to speed up the process of collecting data and generating incident reports – that will allow our teams to report both major and non-major incidents to the community." – Asst. Sheriff Kristen Morales, Information & Technology/Investigations & Internal Affairs
The weekly Incident Report will be published each Friday afternoon on the OPSO website: www.opso.us/media.
In a statement, Sheriff Hutson said:
"Change takes time – and here at the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office, we are working everyday to make the changes I was elected to bring to this organization. The fact is, transparency does not have to be achieved at the expense of accuracy. It would be irresponsible of us to put out unverified information during the initial steps of an investigation; we do not have the luxury of those on social media to simply erase or edit a post. I pledged to be transparent and accountable, and I will continue to do that while ensuring we do thorough investigations and that the information we share is accurate. - Sheriff Susan Hutson
The Warden of the Orleans Justice Center, Dr. Astrid Birgden, also shared details on the current status of former residents of pod 2E – where a protest and joint Department of Corrections and OPSO operation to end the protest took place last week. Immediately after their protest was ended, WellPath (the medical provider inside OJC) checked each resident, but no injuries were documented. On Monday, OPSO staff called WellPath back in to check residents after discovering five residents had minor injuries.
Starting today, former 2E residents will be taken off of lockdown and will be released on the same time schedules as all 24 pods of the Orleans Justice Center.
"I will begin weekly meetings with the two elected resident representatives from that pod to ensure grievances are heard and that they are informed about various policies here at OJC. Weekly meetings with pod representatives have proven a productive pool in planning new jail programming and ensuring their mental health and social needs are heard and met. – Dr. Astrid Birgden, Asst. Sheriff for Jail Operations.
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