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NOPD Touted for Creating and Implementing New Peer Intervention Program

by Dawne Massey

November 15, 2016

Categories: On the Beat

Topics: Police Training

NOPD Touted for Creating and Implementing New Peer Intervention Program

The NOPD’s new EPIC peer intervention program is featured in the current issue of The Police Chief magazine, which is the official publication of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

 

The article, An EPIC Idea by NOPD: A New Model for Ethical Policing, touts the department’s recently launched EPIC program. EPIC stands for Ethical Policing Is Courageous, and the program was created by NOPD’s own officers with the help of national experts, community members and the federal consent decree monitor.

 

NOPD launched the program in January 2016 with a goal of empowering officers on the streets to intervene if they see a colleague doing something wrong or unethical. NOPD leaders, supervisors and many rank-and-file officers have already received EPIC training, and the department is now in the process of training all current officers and new recruits.

 

The science behind EPIC is based upon years of social science research into “active bystandership.” The concept originated in studies of the Holocaust and other human rights atrocities that featured “passive bystanders” – people who stood back and didn’t say anything about the atrocities they were witnessing.  An “active bystander” is one who intervenes to protect others rather than standing by and watching wrongdoing occur.

 

U.S. Attorney Kenneth Polite called EPIC “a groundbreaking tool for repairing broken community trust” in a recently published Op-Ed in the New Orleans Times-Picayune . Polite also wrote that “EPIC is more than a training module; it is a philosophy that will manifest itself throughout the NOPD's operations and interactions.”

 

 

EPIC was also featured in the New York Times and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) newsletter earlier this fall. 

 

For more information about the EPIC program or to read about additional ways NOPD is modernizing policing in New Orleans, visit the official department website NOPDNews