The New Orleans Police Department was planning to arrest an officer hours before he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl, according to testimony Tuesday in a federal civil rights trial over the extent of the city’s responsibility for the teen’s assault by Officer Rodney Vicknair in September 2020. Stella Cziment, the city’s independent police monitor, testified that she had a conversation on the morning of the assault in which she was told the department already had a warrant for Vicknair, the Washington Post reports. “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.” 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.
The victim, who asked to be referred to by her middle-name, Nicole, is now 19 years old. She 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 Corbin 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. Vicknair was the sixth New Orleans officer convicted of crimes involving child sexual abuse since 2011, The Post found.
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