By james art A new study suggests the city’s law enforcement agencies are duplicating their efforts, and a merger between the Baton Rouge Police Department and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office may be the solution to local crime problems.
Commissioned by SafeBR, a coalition of local leaders, the study does not directly recommend a method for consolidating the two. But he lays out a number of ways in which a unified department can work more efficiently.
“Our community is at a critical juncture,” SafeBR member Nile Patel said in a statement after the study was released Wednesday. “The negative headlines, fiscal pressures and rising homicide rates demand an urgent response from our community leaders on how we can more comprehensively support and ensure public safety.” Whether through joint forces or other ideas, we as a community come together to demand and deliver solutions.”
However, the much-discussed merger of BRPD and EBRSO continues to prove controversial, including among some senior local law enforcement officials.
“They keep using the word ‘consolidation.’ And this report is not a consolidation,” BRPD Chief Thomas Morse said. “This is the elimination of the Baton Rouge Police Department, and the Baton Rouge Police Department has been here for over 100 years.”
More efficient services
Over the course of several months, 21CP Solutions, a national public safety consulting firm, evaluated BRPD and EBRSO practices and data and interviewed officers, residents and focus groups to identify ways a more unified approach could be beneficial.
The Louisiana Constitution makes the sheriff the chief law enforcement officer in each of the state’s parishes, so the study examines the folding of BRPD into EBRSO.
The consultants found redundant positions between the two agencies and identified numerous places where a merger could be cost-effective.
“By pooling resources through consolidation, an agency may be able to reduce overall capital and operating costs by maintaining fewer facilities, shared debt service and reduced facility overhead costs,” such as maintenance and supplies, the study said.
East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreau said the merger could result in cost savings, but would also result in a bigger upfront hit.
“I suppose there is an opportunity to cut costs with a handful of administrative positions, but the cost of combining the two (new facilities, retirement systems, uniforms, units, pre-employment screening, additional training, etc.) would far exceed such savings , related to the administration,” he wrote in an email Wednesday.
The 110-page report said the city-parish spends about $210 million each year on police services between the two agencies — which equates to about $467 per resident. That’s much higher than the $352 per capita average spent in the rest of Louisiana and the nation, the study said.
The salaries of city parish clerks have been the subject of recent debate. That includes BRPD officers, whose pay scales start around $36,000 — far less than the $52,000 other markets pay new hires, another recent study found.
Although BRPD take-home pay is relatively low, a large portion of the city and parish budget goes to officers whose pensions are stable. The average gross annual cost per officer is about $108,000, the consultants found.
According to the SafeBR study, a partial or full merger of the BRPD with the EBRSO could provide some reprieve for this problem.
Are there any cuts?
Although the study claims both agencies also have cuts when it comes to criminal response, Gautreaux disagrees.
“There’s really no duplication of effort between the two agencies that we know of,” he said, noting the two oversee separate jurisdictions. “Therefore, if two agencies were one, it would require departments with personnel and equipment equal to the combination of what each agency currently has.” For example, BRPD’s SWAT often assists our SWAT when additional personnel are needed, and vice versa. two agencies were combined, it would require a SWAT the size of our two current divisions combined.”
Morse echoed the sheriff and said calling the two SWAT teams redundant is like calling the Louisiana State Police SWAT units redundant.
“We’re in our own lanes and we have our own responsibilities,” he said.
“Heaviest” agencies
Of the 124 BRPD officer vacancies reported during the survey, none of the vacancies were for sergeant, lieutenant or captain positions, the report’s authors wrote.
“As a result, 21CP notes that the department is even higher than normal,” the study said.
A merger with EBRSO could open up an opportunity for high-end positions to better cover the patrol. Although the study noted that EBRSO would need to be staffed to reflect an agency that would be at least twice its current size, department and department leadership would not need to double in any case to make costs proportional.
District 3 Metro Council Member Rowdy Gaudet attended SafeBR’s presentation of the study Wednesday morning and called the discussion surrounding the report’s implications “healthy.”
“100 percent think (the merger) is worth exploring,” Gaudet said. “(SafeBR) have been very clear that this is not the final solution to anything and it very much starts a discussion and a conversation.”
District 11 Metro Council member Lori Adams sponsored a presentation of the report to the council at a recent meeting. The presentation was ultimately postponed, but Adams said he expects it to be on the agenda in the near future.
Communication and shared information
Between 2019 and 2023, BRPD averaged about 124,000 calls for service each year for the nearly 220,000 residents it serves.
During the same period, EBRSO received nearly 68,000 calls for more than 167,000 residents in the service area.
SafeBR claims that communication problems between the two agencies potentially lower their overall detection rate, meaning the number of crimes solved. They say it’s a problem with criminal activity seeping in and out of each jurisdiction and problems with information sharing, although there has been some improvement.
“Several interviewees from both agencies and the larger community noted that communication and cooperation between the two law enforcement agencies has been problematic in the past but has recently improved,” the consultants wrote. “EBRSO reported that a recent change by BRPD to its records management system allegedly made it more difficult to share information, but BRPD maintains that the RMS change was a direct result of RMS-related difficulties that EBRSO brought to the fore for all agencies in the communications district and the BRPD was forced to accept at that time.”
But Morse and Gautreau said those claims are also unfounded.
Morse, who himself conducted an hour-long interview with 21CP about the study, said the change to BRPD’s information-sharing software was to better fit the agency and has mechanisms for units to share data and information with countless other agencies.
The sheriff said EBRSO and BRPD worked together to find solutions to continue sharing information.
Consolidation of crops
The discussion surrounding the consolidation of the two agencies has been debated for a long time, and District Attorney Hilary Moore is living proof of that.
Moore, who attended the presentation of the SafeBR report Wednesday, said the last article he wrote at LSU nearly 50 years ago was on the subject of a possible merger between BRPD and EBRSO.
Prosecutors said the main obstacle to any merger effort would be reconciling the cultures and authorities of the two agencies, something also mentioned in the recent study.
“This is where the rubber hits the road for how departments are going to embrace any kind of change,” Moore said. “Whether it’s a whole wholesale change or a smaller divisional change.”
The SafeBR study says research shows that merger attempts in other U.S. metropolitan areas, where agency cultures have not been adequately addressed, have failed more times than not. The report goes on to say that initial resistance from one or both agencies could further complicate any consolidation attempts.
“The places where they’ve done it and it’s failed are the places where the two departments, they wouldn’t accept the change,” Moore said, adding that any attempt would require a lot of buy-in from both agencies from the top down.
Besides BRPD and EBRSO leadership, it will also require a handful of elected officials to be on the same page in relinquishing their authority.
The BRPD currently reports to the Mayor-President as well as the Metro Council.
If the BRPD merges with the Sheriff’s Office, all law enforcement operations in the city will report to Gautreaux.
“Would a mayor, a (metro) council, a police chief ever say, ‘I’m inclined to turn my authority over to the sheriff?'” Moore said. “Will the sheriff say, ‘I am inclined to accept all other authority’?”
Although BRPD personnel — including the police chief — cooperated with the study and gave several interviews, Morse said he was left “disappointed” with the study’s findings, or lack thereof.
“It leaves far more questions than it answers. I wish I had been socialized with a lot more than I was,” Morse said. “All this talk, I think, is bad for law enforcement in general. They’re going to be bad for the sheriff’s office and they’re going to be bad for us.”
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