New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Monday that she has chosen Anne Kirkpatrick, a former chief of police in Spokane, Washington, and Oakland, California, to head the New Orleans Police Department, a nomination subject to the approval of the City Council.
Kirkpatrick, if approved, would be the permanent replacement for Shaun Ferguson, who retired from the job last year. The post has been held on an interim basis by Michelle Woodfork, a longtime veteran of the New Orleans department, who had also applied for the job.
Kirkpatrick’s job history includes six years as chief of police in Spokane. She was tapped to help with police reform efforts in Chicago under then-Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in 2017. But she left that job soon afterward to head up Oakland’s police department. Kirkpatrick has been hailed as a reformer by her supporters. If she is approved by the City Council, she would head a police department that has been operating under a broad reform agreement with the U.S. Justice Department that was approved by a federal judge in 2013. It was the result of federal investigations growing out of deadly police shootings of civilians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.