How New Orleans police went from ‘most corrupt’ to model force

On patrol down Bourbon Street, dodging broken Mardi Gras necklaces, New Orleans police officer Patrick McFarlane spots a back-packer with gray clothes, a walking stick, dusty beard.

Officer McFarlane, a tall Jersey Shore native with a chevron moustache, approaches alongside his partner, William McGeever.

They talk intently. The man gestures wanly. McFarlane cocks his head. “OK, be safe,” the officer says. The man wanders off – another down-on-their-luck American living just beyond the edge of the neon.

Far from looking for a vagrancy arrest to keep the riffraff away from the tourists, McFarlane explains that he inquired about the man’s trusty dog, which had apparently been stolen while he slept. McFarlane asked whether he needed help making a police report. The man demurred.

“It is a gumbo out here – we get people from all over the world – so we treat every situation according to what it needs,” says McFarlane, who walks one of America’s oldest foot patrol beats.

“If there is obvious criminality, we make an arrest,” says Officer McGeever. “But