Recently, I made the unfortunate choice to turn on my Twitter notifications, meaning my phone is constantly flooded with headlines from around the city. I say unfortunate because every other headline involves a Baton Rouge shooting, murder or overdose.
The number of homicides in East Baton Rouge Parish jumped from 97 in 2019 to 170 in 2021, according to the Parish’s coroner’s office. This startling figure has finally caused the Baton Rouge Police Department and city officials to take action.
The city is investing $2 million in new technology for BRPD, said Mayor Sharon Weston Broome. Broome said the city is also focused on expanding violence prevention programs.
BRPD Chief Murphy Paul recently announced that the department called in national crime experts to research Baton Rouge’s violent crime problem. Information found during the national crime experts’ research will be available to the public in five months.
Paul said that BRPD will also be implementing new technology like drones. He said that Baton Rouge residents can expect to see more criminal investigation detectives and special response teams in high crime areas.
While I think all these steps are great progress for Baton Rouge, I have to wonder why these measures to combat the city’s crime rate were not taken sooner. Though 2021 saw record homicide numbers, this has been a problem for years.
According to the coroner’s office, there were 124 homicide deaths in 2017. That number dipped to 105 in 2018 and 97 in 2019 before jumping to 136 in 2020.
Louisiana has a reputation of violent crime, and most are quick to blame the city of New Orleans because of all the tourist attention it receives. However, according to a New York Times report, even without New Orleans, Louisiana would still have the first or second highest murder rate in the nation. In 2019, Baton Rouge and surrounding metropolitan parishes reported more murders than New Orleans for the first time in recorded history.
In 2014, BBC even did a special titled “Life in a US city’s most dangerous postal code,” exploring crime, poverty and HIV rates in 70805, the zip code in Baton Rouge.
On top of trying to reduce the current alarming crime rate, Paul said the police force is short about 100 officers. He is planning on launching a marketing campaign to attract new recruits.
Although Paul has only been police chief since 2018, he has already taken necessary steps to better Baton Rouge. I just wish city officials would have done more to address the crime rate sooner.
Lura Stabiler is a 21-year-old journalism senior from Baton Rouge.
