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New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said city police weren’t notified about the escape until 10:30 a.m., about two hours after the routine headcount turned up short. The department then set out to inform the public so people could protect themselves and help with the search.

“We wanted to immediately notify our public because we knew these escapees would be in our city,” she said before promising a “full court effort” to track down the escapees.

Kirkpatrick declined to criticize the sheriff’s office but said the delay in reporting the escape was “concerning.” When asked whether Hutson should have let her know about the escape sooner, the superintendent demurred.

“We’ll deal with that at another time,” she said.

Last year, Hutson requested the New Orleans City Council increase her budget by 60 percent, from $55.3 million to $88.3 million to deal with an influx of inmates, according to nola.com. The sheriff told city leaders her office was holding far more people than the jail and her staff could handle, costing millions in unexpected expenses.

The roughly 1,500 inmates the jail has housed for the last year has been well above the 1,250-inmate limit the city council had put in place and far more than the 900 inmates her deputies can safely oversee, the news agency reported. “We are underfunded, understaffed, underpaid, so we do our best to hire staff and retain them,” Hutson said Friday, “but like everyone else, we’re short.”

The jailbreak is the latest in a series of oddly high profile incidents regarding the Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson over the last several weeks.

The current Governor of Louisiana has critiqued New Orleans sanctuary policy for handling immigration since at least 2017, when he was Attorney General for the state. The policy is the result of a federal consent decree handed down by the Department of Justice.

In 2024, the mayor of New Orleans, who has been under legal pressure due to her own corruption scandal, ignored concerns of many civil rights advocates, when she sided with the Governor to establish a permanent state police (Troop Nola) presence in the city.

Governor Landry claimed this was necessary to reverse damage to NOPD caused by the Federal decree.

Hutson stated in a news conference Friday that she “wrote letters to the consent decree judge, city council and everyone who would listen” about the budget and funding to get help with the defective locks at the jail.

The following has all seriously happened in New Orleans over the last 2.5 weeks:

•Sanctuary city trial. The current Louisiana AG filed charges against Hutson to force her to lift what the state argues is a sanctuary city policy, relating to a federal decree placed on NOPD by the DOJ.

The AG, a long time friend of Governor Landry, argued that New Orleans was in violation of state law created last year.

That law was written by Blake Miguez, a different long time friend of Landry and member of his Louisiana DOGE taskforce. Miguez has also been helping the Governor restructure the Louisiana board of ethics following claims of ethics board violation, which have allowed Landry the ability to appoint the majority of the members of the ethics board directly, with less oversight.

Ultimately, the federal judge ruled that she did not believe AG Murrill had the authority to make those claims against Hutson.

•A Trump EO about ending federal decrees and sanctuary cities was released on the Monday night, (less than 48 hrs) before the Wednesday trial

•The Saturday after the trial, the city held a vote to continue a millage, so that a small amount of property tax would fund the jail. Hutson said she needed the funds to make repairs to the jail, but faced a bizarre disinformation campaign falsely claiming voting yes would raise taxes. Nobody has ever taken credit for the signs placed around the city.

It just barely passed by 2 votes. A request for a recount was filed early the next week.

•The recount request was filed under an alias by somebody who had previously run for elected office in Louisiana, and was previously involved in revealing an astroturfing scandal against the city The recount ultimately increased the number of yes votes so the millage passed by 4 votes.

•This past Tuesday the city submitted a request to lift the consent decree. The request was filed right at the 5 pm deadline

•Thursday Governor Landry released an EO urging Louisiana law enforcement to partner with ICE

From the Office of the Governor news release Governor Jeff Landry Partners with President Donald Trump to Launch “Operation GEAUX”

•Late Thursday night/early Friday morning, 11 prisoners escape from Orleans Parish jail

•Hutson is up for re-election soon. Candidates running against her are now speaking to the press, claiming this should make her ineligible to run for re-election.