Anne Kirkpatrick, the chief of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), instructs executive members of law enforcement agencies on “bias and diversity” as a National Instructor for the Leadership Training Program at the FBI’s Law Enforcement Executive Association.
Kirkpatrick, who leads the NOPD as it responds to the early in the morning terrorist attack allegedly committed by Shamsud Din Jabbar on January 1, was described as an instructor for the FBI program by the National Press Foundation (NFP) in 2024. She was a panelist for the foundation in January 2024, when the group said Kirkpatrick recommended police increase their engagement with journalists.
The website explains, “In addition to executive leadership experience, 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.”
Prior to the selection of Kirkpatrick to lead NOPD in September 2023, the Memphis, Tennessee native was chief of the Oakland Police Department (OPD) in California between 2017 and 2020.
Kirkpatrick was ultimately fired in 2020 by the city’s mayor and the Oakland Police Commission, a citizen-led group that maintained extensive authority over the California city’s police force. The commission could have fired Kirkpatrick without the mayor’s involvement, if it had accused Kirkpatrick of wrongdoing while on the job, but instead fired Kirkpatrick claiming public trust in her leadership was “irrevocably lost.”