New Orleans Police Superintendent has Collected $2.97M from Taxpayers since 2016

Superintendent Kirkpatrick has received criticism over response to fatal New Year's attack.

After a man drove a truck into a crowd of people in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, leaving 14 dead, reporters asked police superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick why the city had not installed anti-vehicle barriers as a safety precaution.

Her response? The city had owned barriers since 2017, but Kirkpatrick “didn’t know” they existed. The barriers were installed around the crime scene on Jan. 2.

Kirkpatrick worked for the FBI, Chicago, Oakland, and five other cities before coming to New Orleans. She apparently didn’t believe she was required to know about her department’s inventory of anti-vehicle barriers, but she has collected $2.97 million from taxpayers since 2017, including salary and legal settlements.

New Orleans hired Kirkpatrick in September 2023 with a salary of $337,943, making her the second-highest paid person in the city.

Only 10 other people in the city made more than $200,000. No one else in the police department earned more than $172,787. Mayor LaToya Cantrell made only $188,370.

Kirkpatrick was previously the chief of police in Oakland, California, beginning in January 2017.

Her starting salary was $250,003, but by 2019 her earnings had reached $334,090.

The Oakland Police Commission voted unanimously to fire Kirkpatrick without cause in February 2020. She sued for wrongful termination, claiming she was fired for speaking out against alleged corruption in the Commission, an independent civilian group that oversees Oakland’s police.

A federal jury agreed, and in 2022 ordered the City of Oakland to pay her $1.5 million in damages. The sum included a full year’s salary ($337,675) and legal costs ($250,000). Kirkpatrick had originally asked for $3 million, including “emotional damages.”

Before her Oakland job, Kirkpatrick worked all across the country. She started with the Memphis Police Department before working in four different cities in Washington and as a leadership instructor with the FBI.

She returned to Washington as chief deputy at the King County Sheriff’s Office, but left two years later to head up the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Professional Standards, where she earned $79,652 for five months’ work in 2016.

OpenTheBooks’ data shows that Kirkpatrick earned $18,657 from Chicago in 2017, even though she left for Oakland in January.

New Orleans had 193 homicides in 2023, or 53.8 per 100,000 people — the highest rate in the country, according to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Only St. Louis was close with a 53.7 homicide rate. Detroit, in third place, had 40.9 homicides per 100,000 people.

Before the New Year’s Day attack, New Orleans announced that murders are down 35% and overall crime is down 26% in the past year since Kirkpatrick took over. Still, 2,408 violent crimes were reported in 2024, including 120 homicides. That’s a rate of 33.5 homicides per 100,000 people, which would have been fourth worst in the country in 2023. Many cities have not yet released 2024 data.