NOPD has been caught repeatedly and illegally spying on New Orleanians with banned facial recognition,  abusing license plate readers, and flying drones without oversight and then lying about it. Sign this petition to tell the New Orleans City Council: investigate the abuse, ban Project NOLA, and put NOPD surveillance under independent expert oversight.

NOPD's abuse is documented, not alleged.

This is not speculation. It is a public record built from national investigative reporting, years of records requests, and NOPD's own documents:

Facial recognition. For roughly two years, NOPD officers received real-time facial recognition alerts on their phones from Project NOLA — a private surveillance network of more than 5,000 cameras run by a former NOPD officer, using Chinese camera hardware the federal government has banned. This directly violated the city ordinance restricting facial recognition. When the program was exposed by national media, NOPD claimed it had "paused" it. But public records tell a different story: Project NOLA's own materials document live monitoring stations in NOPD district offices, facial recognition alerts sent to named NOPD detectives, and arrests credited to facial recognition matches — while NOPD claims it has zero records of any of it. NOPD also omitted these alerts from the quarterly surveillance reports the law requires it to give the Council. Either NOPD kept no records of a mass surveillance program, or it is hiding them. Both are disqualifying.

Drones. NOPD flew hundreds of drone flights in just the first months of this year — and left the required justification blank on roughly three-quarters of them. NOPD has drafted policy language that would authorize weaponized drones. When residents filed formal complaints about flights that violated NOPD's own policy, the Public Integrity Bureau closed them without investigation.

License plate readers. NOPD uses automated license plate readers, and surrounding agencies across the metro run cameras from Flock Safety — the company building a nationwide vehicle-tracking network that law enforcement can search across jurisdictions. These cameras don't just read plates; they log the make, model, bumper stickers, and location of every car that passes, and feed it into databases that thousands of agencies across the country can search, including federal immigration authorities. Our movements — where we live, work, worship, and protest — are being collected without our knowledge or consent and shared far beyond New Orleans. NOPD has never publicly accounted for what ALPR data it collects or accesses, who searches it, or where it goes. Given NOPD's record with facial recognition, no one should assume this data is being handled lawfully either.

Mass surveillance without consent. Project NOLA's camera network doesn't just watch criminals. It scans every face and logs every person who walks past — residents, workers, kids, protesters, parishioners. Its access hasn't stayed local: state intelligence officials have been handed credentials to watch New Orleans through this private network, with no contract, no oversight, and no vote by anyone we elected.

NOPD cannot be trusted to police itself.

Every safeguard has failed. The ordinance was violated. The mandated reports were falsified by omission. The records don't exist. The complaints get closed. The officials responsible face no consequences. An agency with this record does not get the benefit of the doubt — it gets independent oversight imposed on it.

What we demand
We, the undersigned residents of New Orleans, urge the City Council to act:

1. Investigate NOPD's abuse of facial recognition. Every Project NOLA alert. Every violation of the city's ordinance. Every report to the Council that left the truth out. The public deserves the full story, on the record.
2. Investigate NOPD's use of Flock and license plate readers. Tell us who searches our location data, how long it's kept, and which outside agencies — including ICE and CBP — have pulled data on New Orleanians. Don't renew the Flock contract until those answers are public.
3. Ban Project NOLA — for NOPD and for the whole city. No cameras, no alerts, no footage, no data laundered through a private nonprofit. A spy network that helped police break the law should not get a second chance under a new name or a new memo.
4. Stop buying surveillance. Freeze every purchase and renewal of facial recognition, license plate readers, drones, and surveillance technology until real oversight exists. Our tax dollars should not fund tools used to break our own laws.
5. Hold officers accountable. Officers and command staff who violated NOPD policy and city law must face real discipline with public findings — not complaints quietly closed without investigation. Rules without consequences are not rules.
6. Put an independent expert authority over NOPD surveillance. Technologists, civil liberties experts, and community members — with no ties to NOPD or surveillance vendors — with the power to review, approve, or reject every surveillance contract, policy, and use, and to audit compliance continuously. NOPD has proven it will not police itself. Someone else must.

Why this matters
New Orleans has been here before. The Council banned this technology because it misidentifies Black residents at far higher rates, because it chills free speech and assembly, and because mass surveillance treats every one of us as a suspect. NOPD ignored that ban in secret. If there are no consequences now, no law the Council passes will ever constrain them again.

Public safety is built on trust. NOPD broke it. Only real accountability and independent oversight can restore it.

Sign and share this petition. Tell the City Council: no more spying, no more lies, no more impunity.