FBINAA MARAPR MAG.2019.FINAL

The New Orleans community’s satisfaction with their Police Department has been on a steady ascent over the past few years. Compared to a city-wide baseline survey conducted in 2014, by 2016 “community members had better perceptions of their most recent contact with the NOPD, were more satisfied with the department, had higher ratings of trust, and reported being more willing to cooperate with NOPD.” A different, but more recent, community survey found a continuation of this trend, with the NOPD’s satisfaction rating among community members bumping up four points between 2016 and 2018. During more or less this same time period (2013 through 2018), the NOPD also saw a 30% decrease in civilian complaints against police officers. W hile these trends are significant in their own right, they are truly remarkable considering, less than 10 years ago, the NOPD was described as a broken department by the U.S. Depart- ment of Justice. In a lengthy report following a comprehensive, multi-year investigation of alleged civil rights abuses, the DOJ con- cluded the NOPD had “long been a troubled agency,” with “[b]asic elements of effective policing... absent for years.” Today, NOPD is a changed, and in many ways model, law enforcement agency. There are many factors that have contributed to NOPD’s on- going transformation, among them scores of rewritten policies, a wholly revamped training program, better supervision, and a new leadership team sincerely committed to righting the wrongs of the past. But there is another contributor that has received somewhat less attention. In 2016, the men and women of the NOPD, working with a small group of psychologists, historians, and community stakeholders, developed and implemented the nation’s first department-wide police peer intervention program focused on preventing mistakes and misconduct before they occur. ETHICAL POLICING IS COURAGEOUS (EPIC) The program, called EPIC (for Ethical Policing Is Coura- geous) is highly innovative yet stunningly simple. The program teaches officers (from recruits to leadership) strategies and continued on page 10

F B I N A A . O R G | M A R / A P R 2 0 1 9

9