BATON ROUGE — The Baton Rouge Police Department is down more than 150 officers, struggling to fill academies and warning it may soon have to scale back services if conditions don’t improve.
Right now, BRPD has roughly 520 officers on staff, far below its authorized level of 696. That 176 officer gap is already showing up on the streets.
In some cases, shifts that once had more than a dozen officers are now operating with about half that.
“It’s hard to say because the men and women of the department are doing such a great job,” Chief TJ Morse said on UWK’s podcast Louisiana Unfiltered. “But they can’t keep up the pace.”
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BRPD: ‘We’re going to have to talk about what services to cut’
Behind the scenes, leaders are now weighing what services may need to be cut. That could mean longer response times, fewer proactive patrols and some calls no longer getting an in-person response.
Instead, Morse said, people may be asked to file reports online or go to a station.
“We’re at that point right now,” Morse said. “We’re really going to have to talk about what services we’re going to cut and what we can no longer provide. You look at a big event like the concert they’re having at LSU. It takes 100 officers to do the traffic for that. A parade takes 120 to 150 officers. If we’re down to 500 total officers, that’s a vast majority of the department.”
The concern is not just about response times, but about what policing in Baton Rouge looks like day-to-day if staffing continues to drop.
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Struggling to recruit: ‘We’re at the bottom’
The shortage is being driven in part by a sharp drop in applicants. A decade ago, BRPD could see around 300 applicants competing for about 50 academy spots. Now, the next academy is starting April 6 with just 11 recruits.
At one point earlier this year, an academy had to be canceled altogether because there weren’t enough qualified applicants to fill it.
“10 years ago, you had 300 people applying for a 50-person academy,” Morse said. “Now, we’re looking at 35 that we then narrow down to 11.”
Morse points to pay as the biggest factor.
“Right now, we’re at the bottom,” he said.
Starting salary for BRPD officers is just under $41,000. A proposal headed to the Metro Council would raise that to about $58,000 and give current officers roughly a 15% raise.
That would put BRPD among the highest paid officers in the state. Without it, the department says it cannot compete.
“Getting up to $58,000 is going to make us competitive with at least our area, so we’ll be able to attract the people who want to stay in Louisiana. At the end of the day, we are the capital city of Louisiana, and we need to have our department and pay our officers.”
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‘The only thing that’s holding us back is pay’
The low pay has led to officers leaving for higher-paying departments, including out of state.
“Baton Rouge really is a central hub,” Morse said. “It’s incumbent on a lot of people in all the surrounding areas to make sure the Baton Rouge Police Department is well paid.
“It’s where the airport is, where people want to come and visit and do tourism and festivals. So we need our department to get that pay raise so that then we can increase our numbers and really start tackling crime.”
But the chief says there’s also a flip side. Since the proposed raise was announced, interest has surged. Officers from other agencies, and even former BRPD officers, have started reaching out about coming back.
“The phone’s been ringing off the hook,” Morse said. “It reinforces what I’ve been saying all along. We have a great department, one of the best in the entire country. The only thing that’s been holding us back is pay.”
The department is planning a lateral academy this summer if the raise passes, allowing already-certified officers to join more quickly.
What happens if the pay raise fails
Mayor-President Sid Edwards says the 15 percent pay increase proposal would take effect in mid-May if approved.
“We rarely do anything big. We Band-Aid everything,” Edwards said on UWK’s podcast Louisiana Unfiltered. “I was looking under every rock asking, ‘How can I do it?’ These raises give us the ability to retain. It could change the trajectory of our city in a positive way.”
The Metro Council is set to vote April 22. Chief Morse said there’s a form anyone can fill out in support of the item or to show up in person and discuss it. “The form takes less than 60 seconds to complete. Description of the item can be “BRPD Pay Raise”, and item #26-00449, and then type “Support” in the blank. No comments are necessary.”
If it doesn’t pass, Morse says the situation could quickly get worse.
“I think it’s going to be a dark, dark day,” he said. “I’m not a doom and gloom kind of person, and I’m not somebody who uses scare tactics like a politician. But it’s just going to be a morale killer.”
He warns the department could drop below 500 officers, lose more experienced personnel, cancel future academies and cut additional services. And once staffing drops further, the chief says, rebuilding becomes even harder.
“You’re never going to catch up to the manpower that we need,” he warned.
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