La. Chief: Police Force 'Doing More with Less' after $9M Budget Cut

In the past, the Baton Rouge Police Department regularly conducted gun violence prevention patrols, sending cars each week to areas with high call volumes of shootings or other violent crimes.

But since the start of 2025, the department has stopped deploying those extra security steps.

The idea of fewer officers being available in her neighborhood alarmed Cathy Toliver, a community advocate who has been committed to combating gun violence after a stray bullet killed her 3-year-old grandson as he slept in his bedroom.

I'm all over this community, especially in the high-crime areas. I get calls all day, calls for balloon releases. It's just heartbreaking." Toliver said. "With this crime going on, if there are no funds there, then we're gonna be in a lot of trouble."

The reduction in patrols is just one in a string of programs ended by BRPD this year, after the department lost more than $9 million from its budget following the creation of the city of St. George.

The Mounted Patrol division and ShotSpotter program were axed earlier this year. Discussions have been held about halting free police details for Mardi Gras parades and other events.

ShotSpotter has since been reinstated after the parent company offered to allow the department to use it free of charge. And while the Mayor's Office and BRPD have a plan in the works to stop free police security for parades, it has yet to be implemented.

Out of all the cuts, Police Chief Thomas Morse Jr. said the loss of gun violence prevention patrols has been the most significant, because those patrols helped the department reduce homicides and combat gang activity in 2024.

"One of the things we did last year that I think made us very successful, when we started seeing those (homicide) numbers drop off, was we were doing a lot of gun violence reduction overtime patrols, having more boots on the ground, having officers out there on directed patrols in our hot spot areas," Morse said.

Still, compared to the 68 homicides by midyear 2024, Baton Rouge homicides are down this year.

Overtime opportunities ended

The patrols were being paid for with money from the department's overtime budget, and were carried out in addition to BRPD's regular beat work. Each week, five to 12 officers would take overtime shifts to conduct the patrols.

In addition to the loss of $9 million of tax funding due to the establishment of St. George, Morse said about another $3 million of BRPD funds were also lost as American Rescue Plan Act money dried up this year.

In BRPD's $101 million operating budget for 2025, salaries and overtime for Uniformed Patrol totaled over $20 million.

If you include the salaries and overtime for all other department employees, including criminal investigations, administration and special operations, that number makes up $44.35 million out of the $101 million operating budget.

In a sign of how the department is being more conservative with extra pay, the Uniform Patrol's current overtime budget is more than $500,000 less than last year.

Morse said that in previous years, BRPD was spending around $20,000 each week out of the overtime budget to fund the gun violence prevention patrols.

The loss of the overtime opportunities means BRPD officers will make less money, Morse said, since they were a regular way for officers to add to their paychecks.

"I gotta give hats off to our officers who are doing more with less," Morse said. He said great police work is still being done even though the department is "not able to do as much with less money."

In multiple conversations with Morse, the chief highlighted the efforts of Mayor-President Sid Edwards to deliver more funds to BRPD to make up for the losses.

"The community can be assured that requests from BRPD are being met with support," said former BRPD chief Jeff LeDuff, speaking on behalf of the Mayor's Office. "We have funded essential services, including overtime pay and special events coverage, and continue to work diligently to keep key public safety programs, like ShotSpotter, active and operational."

Meanwhile, Morse said BRPD is finding ways to stretch the budget to meet the department's needs.

One example: using grants that fund overtime patrols for seat belt enforcement, and then directing those patrols to also frequent the same high call-volume areas where gun prevention patrols were assigned.

"So it's just trying to repurpose things and move things around," Morse said. "Then being smart with the resources we do have, relying on our neighborhoods and our communities, our business people for camera access. Using technology to help us out where we can't actually have officers."

Hot spots

While focused on gun violence, the now-canceled patrols were really a cross-city response to a spike in any kind of crime. The "hot spots," as Morse called them, were determined each week using 911 call data.

"We would take our crime stats every week," Morse said. "We would take that, combined with info from our Intelligence and Special Investigation people, and see where we were expecting problems. Then we would put our resources into extra patrols into that area to try to drive down the gun violence in any anticipated retaliation shootings."

Examples from Morse included patrols being dispatched to downtown following a spate of car burglaries, to intersections where drivers had been drag racing, and to Scotlandville after a spike in drive-by shootings. In their time, these patrols were sent "kinda everywhere," the chief said.

According to 2024 firearm incident data, this pans out. A total of 1,302 reported incidents were spread relatively evenly over BRPD's jurisdiction, corresponding to Metro Council districts 2, 5, 6, 7 and 10.

Cleve Dunn, the councilman for District 6, said the loss of police service is not only a symptom of the creation of St. George, but validation of lower court rulings that predicted that the establishment of the new city would limit public services for the rest of the parish.

" The Baton Rouge Police Department having to pull back workforce or extra duty hours to cover what they deem as critical areas because of budget cuts of $9 million is just one of many examples of that," Dunn said. "It's the reality of the forging or creation of the city of St. George.

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