NOPD planned to arrest officer hours before he sexually assaulted teen, official says

“I thought they were going to arrest him,” said Cziment, who served as the deputy police monitor at the time.

Five days earlier, Cziment’s boss had sent a text to Shaun Ferguson, then NOPD’s top official, alerting him to “potential sexual abuse of a minor by an officer.” That text, which the city did not disclose during discovery, was uncovered by a Washington Post investigation earlier this year. Ferguson, who admitted in a deposition that he did not recall taking any action after being alerted to a potential child sex crime, is expected to testify Wednesday.

Susan Hutson, who sent the text to Ferguson, testified Tuesday that she took the rare step of directly contacting the superintendent because she felt there was urgent danger to a child. Though she only knew the officer’s first name and approximate age, she disclosed that he had first met the girl when he transported her to the hospital for a rape kit, then offered to mentor her.

Hutson, who is now the Orleans Parish Sheriff, testified that was enough information for NOPD to take action, such as removing Vicknair from duty.

“We definitely wanted someone to be on the case, right away,” Hutson said.

The Washington Post does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent. With her permission, The Post is referring to the teen by her middle name, Nicole.

Nicole, now 19 years old, sued the city in 2021 for what she and her lawyers claimed was a failure by the New Orleans Police Department to supervise Vicknair and properly vet him before he was hired. Vicknair, who pleaded guilty to violating Nicole’s civil rights by locking her in his truck and assaulting her, died in January, less than six months into a 14-year prison sentence.

During the first two days of the trial, the city has painted Vicknair as a rogue officer, who “acted on his own morally corrupt self interest.”

Calling the officer “disgusting” and his actions “evil,” city attorney Corwin St. Raymond argued that the department had no way of predicting that Vicknair was going to commit a crime.

“The NOPD does not possess a crystal ball,” St. Raymond said.

City attorneys have argued that NOPD did not have enough information to start an investigation earlier than it did and did not have probable cause to arrest Vicknair before Nicole disclosed the assault in a forensic interview.

On Monday, Judge Carl J. Barbier, who has frequently questioned witnesses himself, asked, “Is there some action that the NOPD could take if an officer is acting very inappropriately with a minor, short of arresting him?”

Lawrence Jones, who led the investigation into Vicknair’s conduct, answered, “Yes, absolutely.”

The independent police monitor said that while Jones was interested in acting swiftly, there was resistance from his boss, then Public Integrity Bureau chief Arlinda Westbrook. Cziment testified that Westbrook was dismissive of signs of grooming by Vicknair, describing them as “awful” but “lawful.”

“This is a full-grown officer, full-grown adult, having contact with a child,” Cziment told the jury. “And I was very concerned about the potential pattern or the potential access that this officer had to other children and about all of the other red flags that this could mean for the department.”

Westbrook, who had testified earlier in the day, was asked about what police monitor officials described as obvious red flags in Vicknair’s behavior, including giving his phone number at the hospital to Nicole, then 14; showing her photos of a scantily clad woman; returning to the teen’s home at least a dozen times; and taking a photo in which he pressed the girl up against his body.

Westbrook denied that any of these actions were red flags by themselves without further investigation.

NOPD Sergeant David Barnes, in his testimony, said that in 2020, the department had no policy requiring supervisors to look for suspicious patterns in officers’ movements.

And even if Vicknair’s bosses had wanted to see where Vicknair was spending his time, the GPS tracking system inside NOPD’s police cruisers was broken.

A 2019 cyberattack on the city, Barnes testified, had turned the GPS system into a “watered down version.” Supervisors could only access real-time data on a vehicle’s location. Unless they requested specific help from the department’s information technology team, they had no way of digitally tracking officers’ locations over time.

After hours of listening to New Orleans officials defend their actions, Nicole took to the witness stand Tuesday.

She shook as she described Vicknair’s visits to her home in uniform, the sound of his police radio in her bedroom and the feeling of being smacked by his department-issued baton.

“I was scared that no one would believe me,” she said. “He is someone who claims he has all of these superiors that he is close with, and he’s friends with all his higher ups. … He would come after me.”

Four years later, Nicole said, she still has nightmares about Vicknair and struggles to see any authority figure as safe.

“Even if someone was trying to break into my home, I would rather not have to call the police. … I don’t trust them now,” she explained through tears.

Vicknair was the sixth New Orleans officer convicted of crimes involving child sexual abuse since 2011, The Post found.

Jurors will also decide if NOPD failed to properly screen Vicknair before hiring him in 2007. While the city has defended its vetting process as thorough, Nicole’s attorneys have pointed to seven arrests of Vicknair that occurred before he was hired, including an arrest for aggravated assault that occurred the year before he applied.

In 1987, Vicknair was convicted of battery on a juvenile — a conviction that three of his family members told The Post was the result of a previous sexual relationship with a minor. According to the city, this conviction did not appear in Vicknair’s background investigation.

“This case isn’t about a police officer who became a criminal. It is about a criminal that the city made into a police officer,” Nicole’s attorney, Hope Phelps, told the jury.

Anne Kirkpatrick, the department’s current superintendent, testified that she would not hire someone with Vicknair’s background but conceded that not every police chief would come to that conclusion.

Before Vicknair died, he was asked in a deposition if NOPD approved of him making friends with underage girls as a part of his job. His answer, along with other excerpts of his deposition, were read to the jury.

“I’m not going to say they approved. They never — I was never told anything about it, so,” Vicknair said.

“But they knew about it, and they didn’t tell you not to do it, agreed?” Nicole’s attorney, William Most, asked.

Vicknair answered, “Correct.”