Study: La. Police and sheriff's departments could work better together

A new study suggests that the city’s law enforcement agencies are duplicating their efforts, and that a merger of the Baton Rouge Police Department and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office could be the solution to local crime problems.

Commissioned by SafeBR, a coalition of local leaders, the study does not automatically recommend a method to consolidate the two. But it outlines some ways a unified department could work more efficiently.

“Our community is at a critical juncture,” SafeBR member Nial Patel said in a statement after the study was released Wednesday. “Negative headlines, budget pressures and rising homicide rates require an urgent response from our public leaders on how we can support and deliver on public safety more broadly. Whether it is through a united force or through different ideas, we as a community come together to demand and deliver solutions.”

Still, the much-discussed merger of BRPD and EBRSO remains controversial, including among some top local law enforcement officials.

“They keep using the word ‘consolidation.’ And this report is not a consolidation,” said BRPD Chief Thomas Morse. “It’s the desegregation of the Baton Rouge Police Department, and the Baton Rouge Police Department has been here for over 100 years.”

More efficient services

Over several months, 21CP Solutions, a national public safety consulting firm, reviewed BRPD and EBRSO practices and data and interviewed employees, 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 examined merging BRPD into EBRSO.

The consultants found redundancies between the two agencies and identified a host of places where a merger could be cost-effective.

“By pooling resources through consolidation, an agency can reduce overall capital and operating costs by maintaining fewer facilities, shared debt service, and lower facility overhead costs,” the study said.

East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said a merger could lead to cost savings, but it would also come with a bigger initial hit.

‘I think there is an opportunity to reduce costs with a handful of administrative functions, but the costs of combining the two (new facilities, pension systems, uniforms, units, pre-employment screening, additional training, etc.) would all far exceed costs. Such savings related to administration,” he wrote in an email on Wednesday.

The 110-page report says the city-parish spends about $210 million each year on police services between the two agencies — which works out to about $467 per resident. This is much higher than the $352 per capita average spent in the rest of Louisiana as well as the nation, the study said.

The salaries of city parish workers have been a topic of discussion lately. That includes BRPD officers, whose salary schedules start around $36,000 — far less than the $52,000 other markets pay new officers, another recent study found.

Although take-home pay in the BRPD is relatively low, a large portion of the city-parish budget goes to civil servants whose pensions are robust. The average annual gross cost of an officer is about $108,000, the consultants found.

According to SafeBR’s research, a partial or full merger of BRPD into EBRSO could provide some respite from this problem.

Have there been layoffs?

While the study claims the two agencies have also made redundancies when it comes to criminal justice response, Gautreaux disagrees.

“To our knowledge there is really no duplication of effort between the two agencies,” he said, noting that the two oversee separate jurisdictions. “If two agencies were one, there would therefore be a need for departments with staff and equipment equal to the combination of what each agency currently has available. For example, BRPD SWAT often assists our SWAT when additional personnel are needed, and vice versa. If two agencies were combined, a SWAT the size of our two current divisions combined would be needed.

Morse echoed the sheriff, saying calling the two SWAT teams redundant is like calling the Louisiana State Police SWAT units redundant.

“We are on our own path and have our own responsibilities,” he said.

‘Top heavy’ desks

Of the 124 vacant BRPD officer positions reported when the survey took place, none of the vacancies were at sergeant, lieutenant or captain positions, the report’s authors wrote.

“As a result, 21CP finds that the department is still top-heavy than normal,” the study said.

A merger with EBRSO could open up the opportunity for high-end positions that better reflect the patrol. While the study suggests that EBRSO staff would need to represent an agency at least double its current size, department and unit leadership would not need to be doubled in all cases to make costs proportionate.

District 3 Metro Council member Rowdy Gaudet attended SafeBR’s presentation of the study Wednesday morning and called the discussion about the report’s implications “healthy.”

“100% believe (a merger) is worth exploring,” Gaudet said. “(SafeBR) were very transparent that this is not the final solution to anything, and this is very much the start of a discussion and conversation.”

District 11 Metro Council member Laurie Adams sponsored a presentation of the report to the council at a recent meeting. The presentation was ultimately postponed, but Adams said she expects it to be on the agenda in the near future.

Communication and shared information

Between 2019 and 2023, the BRPD received an average of approximately 124,000 calls for service annually for the nearly 220,000 residents it serves.

During the same period, EBRSO received almost 68,000 calls for the more than 167,000 residents in its service area.

SafeBR states that communication problems between the two agencies may lower their overall clearance rates, meaning the number of crimes solved will decrease. They say the problem is that criminal activity is moving in and out of each jurisdiction and there are problems with information sharing, although there has been some improvement.

“Several interviewees from both agencies and the broader community noted that communication and cooperation between the two law enforcement agencies has been problematic in the past but has recently improved,” consultants wrote. “EBRSO reported that a recent BRPD change to its Records Management System reportedly complicated information sharing, but BRPD maintains that the RMS change was a direct result of difficulties associated with the RMS that EBRSO provides for all agencies in the Communications District and that BRPD was forced to accept at the time.”

But Morse and Gautreaux said these claims were also off base.

Morse — who himself conducted an hour-long interview with 21CP for the investigation — said the BRPD’s move to information-sharing software would better suit the agency and that mechanisms have been put in place for units to share data and information with numerous other agencies.

The sheriff said EBRSO and BRPD have been working together to find solutions to continue sharing information.

Consolidating cultures

The discussion surrounding the consolidation of the two agencies has long been discussed, and District Attorney Hillar Moore is living proof of that.

Moore – who attended SafeBR’s presentation of the report on Wednesday – said the last article he wrote at LSU nearly 50 years ago was about a possible merger of BRPD and EBRSO.

The prosecutor said a major hurdle in any merger effort would be reconciling the cultures and authorities of the two agencies, something that was also mentioned in the recent study.

“This is where the rubber meets the road on how the departments will accept any kind of change,” Moore said. “Whether it’s a complete change, or a smaller divisional change.”

SafeBR’s research shows that merger attempts in other U.S. metropolitan areas where insufficient attention was paid to agency cultures more often than not resulted in failures. The report goes on to say that initial resistance from one or both agencies could further complicate any attempt at consolidation.

“The places where they’ve done it and it’s failed is where the two departments wouldn’t accept the change,” Moore said, adding that any effort would require extensive buy-in from both agencies from top to bottom.

In addition to the leadership of the BRPD and EBRSO, it would also require a handful of elected officials to be on the same page when it comes to giving up their power.

Currently, the BRPD is accountable to both the mayor-president and the Metro Council.

If the BRPD were to merge into the Sheriff’s Office, all of the city’s law enforcement operations would fall under Gautreaux.

“Could a mayor, (Metro) council, chief of police, ever say, ‘I am willing to relinquish my authority to the sheriff’?” Moore said. “Would the sheriff say, ‘I am willing to accept all other authority’?”

Although BRPD personnel – including the police chief – cooperated with the investigation and provided a handful of interviews, Morse said he was “disappointed” with the investigation’s findings, or lack thereof.

“It leaves a lot more questions than it answers. I wish a lot more people would have communicated with me than it did with me,” Morse said. “I think all this talk is just bad for law enforcement in general. It will be bad for the Sheriff’s Office, and it will be bad for us.”

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