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Study: Los Angeles police and sheriff’s departments could work better together

Study: Los Angeles police and sheriff’s departments could work better together

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

The study commissioned by SafeBR, a coalition of local leaders, does not contain a clear recommendation for a method of consolidating both solutions. However, it presents a number of ways that a unified department can operate more efficiently.

“Our community is at a critical juncture,” SafeBR member Nial Patel said in a statement following Wednesday’s release of the study. “Negative news coverage, fiscal pressures and rising murder rates require an urgent response from our public leaders on how we can more comprehensively support and ensure public safety. Whether through united forces or other ideas, we as a community unite to demand and ensure solutions are provided.”

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

“They keep using this word ‘consolidation.’ And this report is not a consolidation,” said BRPD Chief Thomas Morse. “This is the abolition 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, assessed BRPD and EBRSO practices and data and conducted interviews with staff, residents and focus groups to determine how a more unified approach could prove beneficial.

The Louisiana Constitution makes the sheriff the chief law enforcement officer in each parish in the state, so the study examined BRPD’s merger with EBRSO.

The consultants found redundant positions between the two agencies and identified plenty of places where a merger could be profitable.

“By combining resources through consolidation, an agency may be able to reduce overall capital and operating expenses by maintaining fewer facilities, shared debt service, and reduced overall facility costs,” such as maintenance and supplies, the study said.

East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said the merger could result in cost savings but would also result in greater initial success.

“I believe there is scope for cost savings with a small number of administrative positions, but the cost of combining the two positions (new facilities, pension systems, uniforms, units, pre-employment screening, additional training, etc.) would far outweigh any costs of such administrative savings ” he wrote in an email Wednesday.

The 110-page report shows the city-parish spends about $210 million each year on police services between the two agencies, which equates to about $467 per resident. The study shows that this is significantly more than the per capita average of $352 spent in the rest of Louisiana as well as the nation as a whole.

A recent topic of discussion has been the wages of city and parish workers. That includes BRPD officers, whose salaries start at about $36,000 — significantly less than the $52,000 that other markets pay new officers, according to another recent study.

Although BRPD’s take-home pay is relatively low, a large portion of the city and borough’s budget goes to officers whose pensions are solid. Consultants found that the average annual gross cost for an officer is about $108,000.

According to the SafeBR study, a partial or complete merger of BRPD with EBRSO could provide relief on this issue.

Are there any layoffs?

While the study shows that both agencies also saw layoffs in crime response, Gautreaux disagrees.

“From our information, there is really no duplication of effort between the two agencies,” he said, pointing out that the two agencies oversee separate jurisdictions. “Therefore, if the two agencies were one, it would require divisions with staff and equipment equivalent to a 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, it would require a SWAT the size of our two current divisions combined.”

Morse echoed the sheriff’s sentiment and said calling two SWAT teams redundant is like calling the Louisiana State Police SWAT teams redundant.

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

“Top-class” agencies.

The report’s authors wrote that of the 124 BRPD officer vacancies reported at the time of the study, none of the vacancies were for the positions of sergeant, lieutenant or captain.

“As a result, 21CP notes that there are even more faculty members than usual,” the study said.

Merging with EBRSO could open up the opportunity for high-end positions that would better reflect patrol operations. While the study indicated that EBRSO would require staffing to reflect an agency that was at least twice its current size, it would not always be necessary to double departmental and unit leadership to keep costs proportionate.

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

“We 100% think (the merger) is worth considering,” Gaudet said. “(SafeBR) have stated very clearly that this is not a final solution to anything, and this goes a long way to starting the discussion and conversation.”

Laurie Adams, District 11 Metro Council member, sponsored the report’s presentation to the council at the last meeting. The presentation was ultimately postponed, but Adams said she expected it to be on the agenda in the near future.

Communication and information exchange

From 2019 to 2023, BRPD averaged approximately 124,000 calls per year to the nearly 220,000 residents it serves.

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

SafeBR argues that communication problems between the two agencies potentially lower the overall clearance rate, which means the number of crimes solved. They say it is a problem of criminal activity flowing in and out of each jurisdiction and problems with sharing information, although there have been some improvements.

“Several interviewees from both agencies and the broader community noted that communication and cooperation between the two law enforcement agencies had been problematic in the past but had recently improved,” the consultants wrote. “EBRSO reported that BRPD’s recent change to its records management system allegedly complicated information sharing, but BRPD maintains that the RMS change was a direct result of RMS-related difficulties that EBRSO led all agencies in the communications district and BRPD was forced to accept at the time. “

However, Morse and Gautreaux said these claims were also unfounded.

Morse, who himself conducted an hour-long interview with 21CP for the study, said the change to BRPD’s information-sharing software was intended to better tailor the software to the agency and put in place mechanisms for individuals to share data and information with countless other agencies.

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

Consolidation of cultures

Consolidation of the two agencies has been discussed for a long time, and District Attorney Hillar Moore is living proof of this.

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

The prosecutor said the main obstacle to any merger effort would be reconciling the cultures and authorities of the two agencies, which was also mentioned in the recent study.

“This is where the issue of how departments will accept any type of change comes into play,” Moore said. “Whether it’s a complete wholesale change or a smaller departmental change.”

The SafeBR study found that merger attempts in other U.S. metropolitan areas that did not pay enough attention to agency culture were more likely to fail. The report goes on to say that initial resistance from one or both agencies could further complicate any consolidation efforts.

“The places where they have done this and it has failed are where both departments would not accept the change,” Moore said, adding that any attempt would require broad buy-in from both agencies from top to bottom.

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

BRPD currently reports to the Mayor-President and the Metro Council.

If BRPD merged with the Sheriff’s Office, all city law enforcement agencies would report to Gautreaux.

“Would the mayor, the (metro) council, the police chief, ever say, ‘I’m willing to relinquish power to the sheriff’?” Moore said. “Would the sheriff say, ‘I’m willing to accept all other authority’?”

Although BRPD staff – including the police chief – cooperated with the study and provided several interviews, Morse said he was “disappointed” with the study’s findings, or lack thereof.

“It leaves many more questions than answers. I wish I had been communicated with a lot more than before,” Morse said. “I think this whole conversation is bad for law enforcement in general. “It’s going to be bad for the sheriff’s office and it’s going to be bad for us.”

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(c) 2024 Attorney, Baton Rouge, La.

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