The New Orleans Police Department will have 54 new officers patrolling the city’s streets Wednesday, after the NOPD’s third academy class of the year graduated Tuesday morning.
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“This class puts us over 1,500 officers for the first time since Katrina. Which is a huge, huge for this police department,” said NOPD Superintendent Warren Riley during an address to the graduating class Tuesday.

It took the NOPD three academy classes and a multi-million dollar recruitment campaign to get to that number.

Harlyn Fontenot was one of 54 new recruits to raise their right hands and pledge to defend New Orleans inside Tulane University’s McAlister Auditorium. The 59-year-old former Marine decided to join the department after seeing a recruitment ad in his hometown of Oakdale, La.

“He’s absolutely in shape and ready for the job, so we’re proud of him,” said Fontenot’s daughter, LeAnn Mezzacapo, after the ceremony. Fontenot passed all the requirements of the academy with no special treatment when it came to physical training. In fact, Riley commended Fontenot during Tuesday’s ceremony.

“Because of my fortitude of sticking in there with them, they were very supportive and I love each and every one of them,” Fontenot said about his fellow recruits.

“I think it’s cool,” his young grandson, Coby Mezzacapo, said.

Fontenot’s fellow recruits are much younger. New Orleans native, and now Fifth District Officer Joseph Davis, Jr. is just 25-years-old.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to become a New Orleans police officer and I finally achieved it,” Davis said.

Since Katrina, the NOPD has struggled to both recruit and retain officers.

“Just started another class last week. And our recruitment won’t stop. We will continue to lose, we estimate about 48 officers by June if our attrition rate stays at 8.25. So, we’re gonna continue to recruit to maintain the 1,550,” Riley said in an interview following the ceremony.

The NOPD is still trying to recruit Louisiana National Guard soldiers to join the force after their tours of duty in the city. They’re supposed to attend an accelerated police academy, but that first National Guard class hasn’t happened yet.

“We actually had about 35 up front and now it may be like 20. We feel good about that, and we hope to start a class sometime in January, at least by the end of January,” said Riley.

Even Tuesday’s graduating class started out bigger, but 21 recruits didn’t make it through the academy, according to the superintendent, largely due to problem with physical fitness.

“It’s a little bit higher than normal for us,” Riley said.

The superintendent said he had hoped to get the department up to 1,600 officers in 2009, and that he still hopes to be able to do that. However, Riley said it depends on a re-examination of the New Orleans City Budget in June, and whether he’s given permission to increase his ranks.