New Orleans police superintendent career: Fired from Oakland, teaches FBI group's diversity course

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, who has been leading the city’s response to the New Year’s Day terrorist attack, was previously fired from her police chief position in Oakland, Calif., and teaches an FBI group’s leadership training program course on diversity.

Kirkpatrick has more than 35 years of policing experience, according to her bio, with 20 years as a police chief. Her record also includes hitting two pedestrians while driving in New Orleans’ French Quarter in August and creating a gun-free zone around a police station there, by placing a vocational-technical school inside it.

The New Orleans police superintendent has been the main spokesperson for local law enforcement following what she called a terrorist attack on the city on Wednesday.

On New Year's Day, a man drove a pickup truck with an ISIS flag through a crowd of people in the French Quarter of New Orleans before opening fire on police with a handgun, killing at least 15 and injuring 35.

The suspect was identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran from Texas. He died in a shootout with police after the incident, which the FBI has now labeled a terrorist attack. The bureau believes Jabbar acted alone. Prior to the incident, he posted online about his support for the Islamic State.

Lone Wolf or part of a plan?

Investigators are looking into whether there’s any military connection between that suspect in the New Orleans attack and the driver in a Cybertruck explosion outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, two law enforcement sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The driver in New Orleans is dead after shooting at police, and a person was found dead inside the Cybertruck after that vehicle exploded and caught fire, officials have said. But whether the drivers overlapped in the time they served in the military, or at any locations, was unclear. The sources said it was a potentially notable investigative strand.

“Last night, we had over 300 officers out here, and because of the intentional mindset of this perpetrator – who went around our barricades in order to conduct this. He was hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said during a press conference on Wednesday.

The injured included two officers who were wounded when the driver shot them in an incident that occurred at the famed intersection of Canal Street and Bourbon Street. Both officers were hospitalized in stable condition.

Jabbar was able to drive down Bourbon Street because the bollards, which are movable protective barriers to keep vehicles from driving where pedestrians walk, are in the process of being replaced by “new removable stainless-steel bollards,” according to the Department of Public Works. The construction on the bollards began in November and is scheduled to continue through February.

Since the terrorist attack, police have installed yellow archers, which are barriers along the sidewalk to prevent anyone from driving up on it, Kirkpatrick said on Thursday. She admitted to a reporter that she “didn’t know about them, but we have them, and so we have been able now to put them out.”

Kirkpatrick “is a National Instructor for the FBI’s Law Enforcement Executive Association’s Leadership Training Program, where she instructs on topics including, but not limited to, Bias and Diversity, Emotional Intelligence and Leading Generations,” her city bio reads.

The association, FBI–LEEDA, “is a 501(c)(3) corporation,” and the “majority of members of FBI-LEEDA are chief executive officers and command staff of law enforcement agencies, directors and commissioners of public safety, corrections and detention staff, and elected sheriffs throughout the United States and foreign countries,” says its website.

She has been the New Orleans police superintendent since 2023. “Kirkpatrick most recently served as Chief of Police in Oakland, where she implemented a significant cultural change in terms of increasing police accountability and transparency, improving Procedural Justice and implementing equity-based decision-making,” according to her bio.

She was the Oakland police chief from 2017 to 2020, when she was fired by the city’s mayor and the Oakland Police Commission, a civilian group created in 2016 with a mission to rebuild trust between police and the community.

Kirkpatrick sued the city following her firing, alleging in part that she was fired in retaliation for being a whistleblower regarding conduct allegedly committed by some commission members. She received a $1.5 million settlement in June 2022 from the city, which did not admit to any wrongdoing.

During her tenure in New Orleans, Kirkpatrick ran into two people with her car.

Last August, Kirkpatrick hit two pedestrians while driving her car in the city’s French Quarter. The woman who was hit received minor injuries and went to a hospital while the man reported suffering no injuries.

“I’m so sorry for what happened last night,” Kirkpatrick said at the time. “I’m so grateful that the two people involved really are going to be fine. Just terribly sorry. It is under investigation, and when it’s completely finished, I’m going to ask for the state patrol to look at that investigation as well. Again, terribly sorry for the whole event.”

“I had just gone to the hospital. I had an officer injured, and I live in the neighborhood here, and I was just making a left-hand turn down there when the event occurred,” she added.

Police station becomes a "gun-free zone"

Last year, Kirkpatrick was part of New Orleans city officials’ efforts to make a police station in the French Quarter a vocational-technical school to establish a gun-free zone. Kirkpatrick said in a July news conference that the Eighth District Station would "soon fit the definition of a vocational-technical school," and within a 1,000-foot radius, be a "firearms-free zone."

Last May, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed a bill into law that went into effect in July and allows the constitutional carry of firearms, meaning the concealed carry of a firearm without a permit besides a few exceptions.

Kirkpatrick’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.