Citizen Crime Watch Blog

FBI to end stint in homicide unit
N.O. squad got help from federal agents
Saturday, June 07, 2008
By Brendan McCarthy

The FBI will be ending its one-of-a-kind homicide initiative with the New Orleans Police Department later this month, withdrawing the agents that supplemented the NOPD’s taxed murder squad.

The move draws to a close the 17-month initiative, which put FBI agents from across the country into the NOPD’s homicide unit for several months at a time. The agents assisted local detectives from crime scene to clearance, knocking on doors and helping out in many other facets of the investigations. A group of five detectives was placed in the unit for up to three-month rotations. …

NOPD Capt. Kevin Anderson, commander of the homicide unit, said the departure will mean fewer bodies in the office but said it will not affect the squad’s output.

“We do feel confidently that it will not impact the service and job performance of the homicide division,” Anderson said. “It will not impact our ability to put murderers in jail.”

[more]

FBI raids hit French Quarter
Anti-terror task force leads ‘ongoing’ probe
Thursday, May 29, 2008
By Leslie Williams

The Federal Bureau of Investigation — as part of a multi-agency anti-terrorism task force that includes the IRS — went to “multiple locations” in the French Quarter on Wednesday morning “in furtherance of an ongoing criminal investigation,” said FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne.

No one was arrested Wednesday morning, said Thorne, who declined to provide information about whether anyone had been detained or records had been seized. Thorne further declined to detail the reason an anti-terrorism task force conducted the raids, which she said started at about 9 a.m.

[more]

FBI halts active role in drug busts
Crackhouse initiative yielded few results
Sunday, May 18, 2008
By Laura Maggi
The Times-Picayune

Former Special Agent in Charge Jim Bernazzani earlier this year described the enforcement effort as stemming from the many tips the FBI has received from people around the city, often ticked off by the drug dealing or consumption at a house just down a street. The FBI decided to tackle the problem by teaming up with probation officers, who are empowered to burst in on their charges with just the suspicion of wrongdoing, allowing law enforcement to bypass obtaining search warrants.

But the program, in some respects, has proved disappointing. While this particular partnership helped parole officers keep track of their wayward charges, it didn’t root out the kind of criminal activity that makes a federal case.

None of 80 house visits since January 2007 resulted in federal charges, because agents found no obvious “interstate nexus” to show the drugs had crossed state lines, said Mark Gant, the acting special agent in charge who took over several weeks ago, when Bernazzani was removed from leadership of the FBI office because he announced possible political aspirations in New Orleans. Bernazzani later retired from the FBI rather than accept a forced transfer to Washington, D.C.

Because of the lack of federal cases, Gant decided to pull back from the crackhouse busts, ending the initiative. The FBI now will refocus efforts to target drug activity above the dealer level, particularly targeting the neighborhood gangs across New Orleans, he said.

[more]

Bernazzani retires
by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
Friday May 09, 2008, 8:13 PM

Jim Bernazzani, the tough-talking face of the FBI in Louisiana, retired from the bureau Friday, two weeks after he was ordered back to the agency’s Washington headquarters for publicly flirting with a run for mayor of New Orleans.

Bernazzani’s decision to stay in New Orleans — and end a 24-year career with the FBI rather than return to Washington — does not signal a continuing interest in running for mayor, however.

“I will not run for political office,” he said Friday afternoon. “Absolutely not.”

Two weeks ago, the FBI announced it had removed Bernazzani from his post as special agent in charge of the New Orleans office and offered him a transfer to Washington. The ouster came swiftly in response to Bernazzani’s two television interviews several days earlier, in which he said he was considering a run for mayor.

The federal Hatch Act prohibits certain federal officials, including FBI agents, from campaigning for office. While it wasn’t clear that Bernazzani had violated the act, the flirtation with politics by a man who supervises investigations of corrupt public officials created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

[more]

FBI chief loses post in N.O.
Talk of mayor’s race leads to transfer
The Times-Picayune
Saturday, April 26, 2008
By Brendan McCarthy

James Bernazzani, the head of New Orleans’ FBI office, a silver-maned, tough-talking, Harvard-educated, larger-than-life crimefighter sent to squash public corruption in a jurisdiction notorious for it, was reassigned to the agency’s national headquarters Friday after he publicly flirted with a run for mayor.

The abrupt transfer marks the end of Bernazzani’s three-year tenure in New Orleans, a tumultuous period during which he carved out a prominent niche as the face and voice of a very public war on corruption.

[more]