James Rosier Jr. isn’t your typical wide-eyed, fresh-faced police recruit. He’s worn a badge for nearly 20 years, and he even wrote a book about his experience as a law enforcement professional.

“My retirement from the Mobile Police Department was a timing issue,” said Rosier. “My oldest daughter was about to graduate, and I knew if I retired now and locked in my retirement I’d still have time to invest 20 years in New Orleans, so it all just sort of worked out.”

Rosier is one of four lateral transfers, or officers who transfer from another agency, in Recruit Class #176. He retired as a lieutenant from Mobile PD earlier this year, and it’s his love of community service that brought him to New Orleans. He says he’s looking forward to getting back out on the street and helping people.

“In Mobile I was the voice of Mardi Gras,” he says with a laugh. “I was the operations command center officer in charge so I didn’t get to do any of the street stuff, and I missed being a cop. I think that had a lot to do with my decision to come here – to get back out in the streets and to be a cop again.”

When he put in his retirement papers, he started looking around online to see which police departments were hiring.  He says the NOPD’s “Get Behind The Badge” campaign “just hit him in the face” and his attraction to the city and the department made the decision even easier.

“New Orleans is a bigger city than Mobile and the NOPD is three times the size of Mobile’s so I figured it would offer more experiences and training that I couldn’t get in Mobile,” said Rosier. “And being 49, I figured I was young enough to start all over and the chance to see and learn new things would be readily available in a larger city.”

In addition to the hours he puts in at the Police Academy Monday through Friday, Rosier is putting in some serious road work. Currently he spends a little more than four hours on the road each day, making the two hour treks to and from Mobile. He and his family will be making the move to New Orleans real soon.

“We’ll be moving here permanently as soon as my daughter graduates high school this coming year. “We’ve always loved New Orleans and spent a lot of time here as a family.”

And the recent pay raises that make the NOPD among the highest paid municipal departments in the region sealed the deal.

“The pay is very competitive – it’s quite a good deal. I left another law enforcement agency as a lieutenant and started here as a PO1 and didn’t lose a dime,” said Rosier.