After more than a decade as the New Orleans Police Department’s independent monitor, Susan Hutson wants to make the switch from watchdog to top dog. Hutson said Wednesday she will run for Orleans Parish sheriff, setting up a clash with 17-year incumbent Marlin Gusman.
Sheriff Marlin N. Gusman speaks during the annual All White Balloon Release along Bayou St. John in New Orleans, Friday, April 23, 2021. The Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office hosted the event during National Crime Victims' Rights Week to honor the families of victims of violent crimes.
The first-time candidate will face stiff resistance in the October election from Gusman, a skilled political operator who has maintained an iron grip on the office despite corruption scandals and federal intervention. He said last month that he intends to run for a fifth full term.
But Hutson is betting that the same voters who recently made Jason Williams district attorney also want a new breed of sheriff. She says she's running to increase transparency and accountability at the Sheriff's Office, improve conditions at the jail and reduce the number of people held there.
"This last year has changed the world. COVID and George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, and on and on," she said. "Now is the time. If we’re going to do this, we're going to do it now."
In order to run, Hutson is taking a leave of absence starting Monday from the Office of the Independent Police Monitor. She will also put on hold her application for another four-year stint as monitor, she said. Her current term expires Dec. 31.
If reelected, he would continue one of the longest current careers in elected office in New Orleans
If elected, Hutson would become the first woman sheriff in New Orleans history, although not the first in Louisiana. A victory would also reflect the growing power of progressives to claim law enforcement roles traditionally held by tough-on-crime politicians.
Meanwhile, the 54-year-old attorney is also banking on changing attitudes toward transplants running for elective office in the city. A native of Philadelphia, Hutson grew up in Houston before returning east to attend the University of Pennsylvania. She was recruited by a dean to attend Tulane University law school.
After graduation in 1992, she worked in a small law firm, as a municipal prosecutor in Corpus Christi, Texas, as an assistant and acting police monitor in Austin, Texas, and finally as an assistant inspector general monitoring the Los Angeles Police Department from 2007 to 2010.
Her oversight role at the LAPD, which was in the midst of a long-running consent decree, gave her a leg up when she applied for the monitor job in New Orleans. Voters created the position via city charter amendment amid growing outrage over post-Hurricane Katrina incidents like the Danziger Bridge and Henry Glover shootings, and the NOPD’s failure to hold officers involved to account.
Her first five years were marked by clashes with former Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux over their respective powers, which were only settled when voters formally split their offices by charter vote in 2016.
The monitor does not have power to conduct its own investigations. But Hutson says her small office has monitored the NOPD’s internal investigations of police shootings, has pushed for the release of body-worn camera videos and has pressed to make department data public. She portrays the switch from overseeing to executing power as a natural one.
Changing guards at the Sheriff’s Office will accelerate the city’s shift toward less punitive approaches to criminal justice, Hutson says. While Gusman has often portrayed himself as a mere jailer with no control over his inmate population size, Hutson says she wants to take active part in trimming the number of people in custody.
Reached Wednesday, the sheriff declined comment.
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“Our community has shown widespread support for reimagining public safety,” Hutson said. “We want to reduce the size and scope of who’s in jail. We want to keep people who are there safe, and when they leave we want them to leave better than when they came there.”
Hutson declined to go into further detail, promising to release a detailed campaign platform at a later date.
Aside from policies, the election is likely to serve as a referendum on the long tenure of Gusman, who Hutson did not criticize directly. He has weathered a federal probe of corruption among his top deputies, numerous inmate suicides and deaths and a brush with federal receivership in 2016. Gusman regained control of the jail from an independent director in November, but he's still under court oversight as part of reform process that continues after eight years.
Gusman supports the controversial plan to build an 89-bed jail expansion on Perdido Street for inmates with mental and medical health problems. Hutson said she's mindful of community opposition to the new building, but also of pressure from federal judges to finish its construction. She promised "to sit down and see what can be worked out."
Gusman was a City Councilman in 2004 when he was elected to replace Charles Foti. Since then he’s faced little opposition at the polls: he trounced Foti when the latter tried to make a comeback in 2014, and he knocked his sole opponent off the ballot in 2017. Before the campaign even begins, Gusman can also count on a considerable war chest. He had $189,000 in campaign funds on hand at the end of 2020.
Jason Williams took office Monday as Orleans Parish district attorney, pledging to remake a traditional, hard-charging office into a progressi…
Hutson sees inspiration in Williams, a career criminal defense attorney elected as district attorney despite the headwind of a federal tax fraud indictment. But she lacks the name recognition and political experience he had as president of the New Orleans City Council.
However, Hutson may be able to count on outside help. Jon Wool, the former Vera Institute in New Orleans director involved in last year’s “flip the bench” campaign to elect progressive judges to Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, confirmed that he and others are exploring a similar effort to run an independent campaign targeting the Sheriff’s Office race.
