I’ve obtained another public records production from the City of New Orleans — request 26-650, 80 pages of email between NOPD officers and Bryan Lagarde of Project NOLA, the private nonprofit that runs a facial-recognition-equipped camera network across the city.
Every complaint described below is in this folder.
What’s in it
The emails run from October 3 to October 31, 2025 — a single month. A few threads quote older messages beneath them, going back to August and September.
Most of it is one thing repeated: an NOPD detective emails a private company a photograph of a person and asks that company to find them on camera. Mixed in are a handful of routine footage requests, a thread where Lagarde arranges to brief Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, a city public safety official passing camera admin credentials to a private consultant, and — notably — a Public Integrity Bureau captain corresponding with Lagarde about my own complaint, in which she thanks him for “providing some insight into your use of facial recognition in collaboration with NOPD.”
Officers do not explicitly write the words “facial recognition” in these emails. They don’t have to. They send a face and a time window to an organization that scans faces.
What NOPD did
Seven threads met the bar I use for complaints: the request came from an officer’s own @nola.gov address, and it asked Project NOLA to find or track a specific person.
- Det. John Huntington sent a photo of a robbery victim and asked whether he was “picked up on any of the cameras in the 8th district last night” — because the man “called us around 2:00am this morning with a story that made zero sense.” Complaint.
- Det. Michael Lane tracked a stabbing victim backwards on the City’s own camera system until he ran out of coverage — “I lose him at that intersection and can’t find him again” — then asked Project NOLA to pick the man up before that point. Complaint.
- Det. Patrick Guidry sent a photo of another robbery victim. Lagarde found him, and then volunteered that he had “[taken] the liberty” of reviewing a month of footage of a woman seen walking beside the victim, concluded her behavior was “consistent with 14:82” — the Louisiana prostitution statute — and attached photos of her from multiple prior nights. Guidry’s reply: “Thanks for your prompt reply. This is very helpful.” Complaint.
- Det. Brody Bonura made two separate search requests on consecutive nights, sending screenshots plus a racial description, and hoping aloud that “there was not much foot traffic on Canal around that time.” Complaint. He’d done the same thing eighteen days earlier, sending three images of “the above pictured individuals.” That one was already the subject of an earlier complaint.
- Det. Huntington again, two weeks earlier — tracked a stabbing suspect for three hours on city cameras, noted he “hangs out at Bourbon and Canal for something like 30 minutes,” and asked Project NOLA for “clearer images.” Lagarde sent close-ups of the man’s face and added: “I’m not familiar with this person and am wondering if he may possibly be relatively new to the FQ.” Also already the subject of an earlier complaint.
- Det. Jonathan Soto sent an attachment, an item number, and nineteen characters of text: “10/14/25 7:00am-1am.” Nothing else. There is no other reason to send that email. Complaint.
The Guidry thread is the worst thing in the file, and I wrote it up on its own: NOPD Ran Facial Recognition on a Robbery Victim. Project NOLA Threw in a Month of Surveillance on a Bystander.
In three of the seven, the person targeted was someone who had reported a crime to police — a victim, not a suspect. Five came out of a single unit, the 8th District Persons Crimes Unit. Two officers appear more than once in the same month.
The complaints
For the five threads not already covered by an earlier complaint, I filed one complaint per thread with the Independent Police Monitor, the Office of Inspector General, and NOPD’s Public Integrity Bureau. All of them, with the underlying emails cited page by page, are in the complaints folder.
| Officer | Email Subject | Email Date |
|---|---|---|
| Det. John R. Huntington | Re: 65P | Oct 31, 2025 |
| Det. Michael P. Lane | video request | Oct 29, 2025 |
| Det. Patrick T. Guidry | Armed Robbery | Oct 29, 2025 |
| Det. Brody L. Bonura | NOPD 65 10/26 | Oct 28, 2025 |
| Det. John R. Huntington | J-16232-25 34C 500 Blk Bourbon | Oct 17, 2025 |
| Det. Jonathan A. Soto | J-13242-25 | Oct 15, 2025 |
| Det. Brody L. Bonura | 65 PERPS | Oct 10, 2025 |
Five of the seven threads carry no NOPD item number at all. There is no case file tying those searches to anything.
This is one month, from one records request. Download the production, read the emails, and check my work.
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