BATON ROUGE — Just one day after Mayor-President Sid Edwards delivered his State of the City, a string of 11 shooting incidents occurred in Baton Rouge. Of those 11 incidents, two were double shootings.
Altogether, 13 people were injured over four days, and of those, six people died of their injuries.
While his State of the City address touted lower numbers in crime in 2025, Edwards emphasized he still isn’t celebrating because of the number of lives lost.
“I’m disappointed and disgusted,” Edwards told UWK of the criminal activity in the city.
“We moved the needle; we’re going in the right direction. We got better, not great, but we got better. And then you get through January 1, and, you know, New Year’s Eve, the young child was shot,” Edwards said.
After Jan. 1, Baton Rouge went about a week with only a few murders, he said, which left him feeling optimistic at the time.
“And then it’s like, just this can opened up, you know, and this 96-hour period of absolute insanity.”
On Thursday, Jan. 8, though, three separate shootings left three people dead. One of the incidents was deemed an accidental shooting and the person arrested was charged with negligent homicide for the death of a 16-year-old boy.
‘Put down the gun & pick up the phone’
Edwards said people need to realize that shootings don’t just affect the immediate victim, but the larger community, too.
“Just one bullet can kill a person, but what the public, what these shooters don’t understand is one bullet kills so many more. So you take a victim, they’re shot and they die. Well, their mother, their father, their grandfather, uncle, their cousin, their friends, their classmates — It affects so many — their future children or their spouse, but the shooter who pulls the trigger, it’s the same for them, but just different,” he explained.
Edwards went on to say that his message to the city is the same as what many have echoed for decades: “Put down the gun and pick up the phone.”
“What is worth ruining whole families over because you’re mad? You know, put down the gun and pick up the phone,” he continued. “There are other ways to resolve conflict, you know. That’s not the way.”
Edwards said that there are plenty of resources and community programs that residents can reach out to, with more social programs getting “beefed up” this coming year, so a person’s first choice shouldn’t be to reach for a gun.
“I could have 1,000 more police and you won’t stop it, you know, not at that level,” he said. “But at the end of the day, law enforcement’s extremely important and social programs…But at the end of the day, it starts at home. People have free will, and that’s where it starts.”
Are the shootings related?
Mayor-President Edwards says he stays in close contact with retired Chief Jeff LeDuff and current BRPD Chief T.J. Morse for a pulse on the city’s crime and possible connections to each incident.
The most recent shootings last week and through the weekend have kept the three in even closer communication as they try to understand the trends in crime.
“But you have a domestic dispute, then you have one who accidentally walked in front of a bullet. Then you have, a shooting at a party. So the first thing I try to do is, okay, are these things related? Is there some some revenge or retaliation, but you can’t make sense of it,” Edwards told UWK.
Chief Morse also spoke with UWK and said that these shootings mostly appeared to be situations where the shooter and victim knew each other.
“It’s hard to throw a blanket over all of them, but from all the information I’m getting right now is very retaliatory in nature or domestic violence,” Morse said. “There was one that involved an argument between two people, you know, getting a fight and then a gun gets pulled out. So it’s not just a random thing involving, you know, carjacking, robbery or road rage or anything like that. It’s definitely where the suspect and the victim knew each other.”
Morse said he couldn’t say that any of the recent shootings were gang-related, but multiple of them were retaliatory in nature.
Needing the public’s help
Morse said the recent shootings from Jan. 8 until Jan. 11 were targeted in nature, so the general public does not need to feel a heightened sense of fear at this time. However, law enforcement agencies need the public’s assistance in solving these crimes and others that happen around the city-parish.
“If you’re in these areas, and you know of information, you have video, if you hear things, please reach out to us or Crime Stoppers,” he said. “We’re going to be doing our best on the back-end to find the people responsible and put them in jail, but we need help on the front-end as well, which is resources and community involvement.”
Edwards added that lately, “the streets are talking” and intel is getting to law enforcement faster than ever before.
The mayor-president said that law enforcement was key to the decreased rates in crime in 2025, but that more needs to be done to help them out. He stressed that they’re understaffed and underpaid, something he has tried to address with proposed budget changes.
Baton Rouge continues to face a staffing crisis within its police department. BRPD was forced to cancel its January academy class after too few recruits signed up.
While he hopes to have a better funded force in the future, Edwards made it clear that it’s not the job of law enforcement to stop the shootings from happening. That choice is in the hands of those who find themselves considering pulling the trigger on another person.
“Being dead or being incarcerated, that’s the end result 90-something percent of the time when someone pulls a trigger,” Edwards emphasized.
Download the Unfiltered with Kiran app from the Apple App Store and Google Play to stay updated on the latest news across the Capital area.
Support UWK and its mission to deliver The News You Deserve. Unfiltered. Become a monthly patron on Patreon today!
