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Despite reforms intended to improve police accountability, Louisiana continues to withhold key law enforcement data from the public, including a database meant to track police certifications and employment histories that could reveal “wandering officers” — those who move between departments after misconduct.

HRDAG has published a tech note outlining a collaborative research effort between the Innocence Project New Orleans and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group to make unstructured wrongful conviction case documents more searchable and useful by extracting structured information about law enforcement personnel and their roles.

Investigative reporting by The Times-Picayune | The Advocate and NOLA.com revealed widespread police impunity in Louisiana, showing that at least 228 officers convicted of serious crimes over the past decade largely retained their law enforcement credentials due to failures by the understaffed Peace Officer Standards and Training Council.

The ACLU of Louisiana reached a settlement in a civil rights lawsuit filed on behalf of a Black motorist who alleged that a police officer in Jackson, Louisiana, violently slammed him to the ground, knocked him unconscious, and arrested him after a racially charged traffic stop.

A new analysis by the Innocence Project New Orleans reveals that many Louisiana law enforcement agencies are failing to comply with a 2017 state law that requires them to report why officers leave their jobs to the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST), a key step in preventing “wandering officers” from moving between departments without accountability.