NEW ROADS — After less than five months in the position, New Roads Police Chief Cedrick Epps has announced his resignation. He will serve another three weeks before leaving the department. New Roads Mayor Theron Smith emphasized that Epps remains in good standing with the department.
“Our constituents can still feel safe and protected. We won’t delay in finding a new chief,” Smith told UWK. “There are people who want to be chief, but it’s a matter of finding the perfect candidate.”
Smith will be forming a committee to search for the next chief. While there have been rumors about the Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff’s Office potentially taking over and dissolving the police department, Smith said he doesn’t think that’s necessary.
“The city is only four square miles, so we can manage that,” Smith said, noting that staffing difficulties in the local police department are largely due to limited pay and officers leaving for higher-paying jobs with other state agencies, police, or sheriff’s departments.
“We’ve hired people with no experience or training, provided them with the necessary training, and then other departments come calling,” Smith explained. He added that the city is trying to address these issues by requiring new officers to sign employment contracts.
And in recent weeks, the department has received a pay raise to help alleviate these challenges. Smith said the starting pay for New Roads police officers is now $17 an hour.
Despite this, with Chief Epps stepping down, the department will remain short-staffed. Although the department is budgeted for eight full-time officers, there are currently only four on duty, and one of those officers will be on maternity leave for the next few weeks.
Epps said he is stepping down for personal reasons but plans to continue recruiting new potential officers for the department in his remaining weeks on the job.
“That’s the nature of the beast in law enforcement right now. Everybody is short-handed,” said New Roads Police Chief Cedrick Epps about the difficulty of recruiting fresh faces for the department. “It looks a little worse at New Roads because we’re only slated to have two on each shift anyway so when you’re down four out of eight, it gives off the allusion that you’re in an extreme bind.”
Epps, a former Pointe Coupee Sheriff’s deputy, was appointed to the position by the New Roads City Council after the previous police chief, Delaney Lee, departed amid allegations of an inappropriate relationship with another officer.
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