A powerful tool for catching criminals in New Orleans isn’t being used these days by local police.

But after the New Year's Day attack on Bourbon Street and last month’s jailbreak by 10 Orleans Parish detainees , some civic and elected leaders say it's time the city loosened the reins on the Police Department's use of facial recognition technology.

At the request of NOPD, City Council members Oliver Thomas and Eugene Green are sponsoring a rewrite of a 2022 ordinance that has kept the department's use of facial recognition in check, following a near-ban on it before then.

The proposed changes come after NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick in April halted the ability of her officers to receive alerts on facial recognition hits for wanted subjects through Project NOLA, a privately run

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