The New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation is once again sounding the alarm, saying the city needs about 1,200 sworn officers to safely police a year-round crush of residents and visitors. In a March 2 Facebook post, the group rolled out per-capita comparisons and what it calls staffing "algebra" to argue that the New Orleans Police Department's current roster of roughly 900 to 910 commissioned officers is not enough. The renewed push lands as city officials and police brass juggle recruitment drives, retention bonuses and academy throughput ahead of yet another packed event season.
Foundation's math and comparisons
In its March 2 post, the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation shared charts and a linked explainer that stack New Orleans' officers-per-1,000-residents ratio against cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and St. Louis, while also folding in visitor volume and officer trauma exposure. The group estimates New Orleans sits at around 2.3 officers per 1,000 residents and argues that roughly 19 million annual visitors, which works out to about 50,000 extra people in the city on an average day, have to be counted in any staffing formula. As the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation explains, those factors underpin its case for a 1,200 officer goal.
Where the department stands
City and department leaders have for years floated 1,200 commissioned officers as a practical benchmark, but available data show NOPD remains well below that mark. Axios reported that the department had roughly 910 commissioned officers at the end of 2025, even as Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick has highlighted crime-fighting gains.
Recruitment and academy bottlenecks
Simply ramping up recruiting will not fix the shortage overnight because the training pipeline has been sluggish. Recent academy classes have seen far fewer officers graduate than initially enroll, and attrition during both training and the early years on the job chips away at any gains. Local reporting that drilled into class-by-class results found cohorts graduating in single digits, a pattern that makes any quick climb to 1,200 officers hard to imagine, as detailed by Police1.
Tourists and events stretch patrols
The city's tourism bureau says New Orleans welcomed about 19.08 million visitors in 2024, an average of roughly 52,000 people a day flowing in on top of the local population. That surge collides with Mardi Gras, conventions and a parade of other marquee events that can pull officers in multiple directions at once. New Orleans & Company published the 2024 visitation totals, and the foundation leaned on similar numbers in its staffing math to argue that event-driven crowds should be baked into patrol planning.
How advocates and officials frame fixes
NOPJF and allied public safety advocates are pushing a toolkit of solutions that includes recruitment campaigns, targeted retention bonuses and private funding for training, wellness and forensics support. The foundation’s website highlights programs that provide advanced detective training, digital forensics equipment and officer assistance services, while city leaders continue to wrangle over pay and staffing ordinances in council hearings covered by local media. NOPJF lays out its support initiatives, and WDSU has reported on council debates over raises and staffing proposals.
Getting to 1,200 sworn officers would take steady funding, better academy throughput and years of sustained hiring, even if the city keeps the issue front and center. For now, the foundation’s spreadsheet-style breakdown and Facebook post add another sharply argued data point to a long-running fight over how many cops New Orleans really needs to keep its streets and its big-ticket events safe.
