Baton Rouge sees improvement in homicide numbers, but officials say more work is needed

Baton Rouge Police Chief Thomas Morse isn’t a fan of discussing statistics, even somewhat promising ones.

Yet, six months into a year marked by a $9 million budget reduction and a shortage of more than 100 officers, he is cautiously optimistic about the city’s crime trends, and quick to praise his department’s resilience.

“I will say, the officers are doing a great job,” Morse said. “They are really doing more with less.”

He also knows that, for the public, no statistic speaks louder than the city’s homicide count.

According to The Advocate’s numbers, which cross-reference data from the Baton Rouge Police Department, District Attorney’s Office and East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, the city has seen 43 homicides in the first half of 2025 — a 19% drop compared to the same period last year.

The Sheriff's Office reported an additional eight homicides outside the city, and Baker and Louisiana State Police each added one to the tally, bringing the parishwide total to 53. (The Advocate's 2025 total excludes deaths that resulted from incidents in previous years, as well as cases ruled as justified, self-defense, suicide or negligent homicide.)

The parish total is about 22% less than the 68 homicides reported by July 1 last year.

Police statistics also show gun violence and property crimes are down roughly 20% within city limits.

While the numbers are encouraging, officials are cautious about drawing conclusions about the rest of the year.

“We are not sure what's going to happen,” District Attorney Hillar Moore said. “It just depends on whether you have a good or bad month.”

In the bigger picture, the parish remains on track to surpass 100 homicides in 2025 — an anomaly a decade ago, now a norm since the pandemic.

Both Morse and Moore point to three main factors among a myriad that continue to fuel violence: gang activity, repeat offenders, and the prevalence of young males committing crime. Still, law enforcement officials are hopeful that renewed collaboration with federal and state agencies, revamped community initiatives, and lessons from New Orleans may finally help change the new reality.

Behind the numbers

Of the 53 homicides recorded in the parish so far, nine were related to domestic violence and two were connected to murder-suicides, according to data from the District Attorney’s Office. The vast majority of the rest were the result of gun violence.

Officials say the prevalence of Machinegun Conversion Devices — easy-to-obtain gadgets that turn pistols into fully automatic, less accurate firearms — has helped fuel these killings and led to innocent bystanders getting caught in the crossfire, like Trevor Harrison, a 27-year-old plumber who was killed in a barrage of bullets Feb. 15 as he drove to a job.

“(Baton Rouge) doesn’t just have a homicide problem. Baton Rouge has a bullet problem,” said Jeff LeDuff, a former police chief who now works in the Mayor's Office.

And while homicide victims range from 3-month-old Jaziel Harper to 80-year-old James Williams, most are young men affiliated with criminal groups that sell narcotics, authorities say.

“Baton Rouge is not different from any other city in America,” Morse said. “There are definitely outliers … (but) if you are not in that lifestyle, you are much safer."

Moore described gang activity as “a bit of a different landscape now.” Criminal groups are constantly shifting, with members frequently crossing over between factions — often fueling cross-group violence. According to Moore, groups like the Bleedas, 60 Gang, 448 and TBG continue to be responsible for much of the violence in the city.

Quelling the influence of these groups is “manpower intensive,” Morse explained, often requiring months of investigation. Facing ongoing staffing shortages in both the police department and the Sheriff’s Office, local law enforcement has ramped up collaboration this year with agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the FBI, and Louisiana State Police to target these organizations. A similar strategy in New Orleans has already shown promising results.

“If you can get to them and not waste time on smaller-level dealers, you are going to have a much quicker and larger impact,” Moore said.

The initiative, which has not been publicly named, has already produced results. In June, authorities arrested more than a dozen members of the local Vultures group on charges related to drug trafficking and multiple shootings. It followed a monthslong investigation led by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office in partnership with the FBI, ATF, DEA and state police.

Combined efforts with federal and state agencies have also helped offset manpower shortages and budget cuts. As part of its cost-saving measures, BRPD ended its targeted gun violence patrols in city crime hot spots at the start of the year, largely because the program depended on costly overtime pay.

So far, Morse said, the absence of these patrols hasn’t resulted in increased violence, due in part because of federal partnerships.

Still, the 70805 and 70802 ZIP codes, long the epicenter of violent crime in Baton Rouge, continue to lead the parish in homicides, with 12 and nine recorded this year, respectively.

“I do think you will now start to see the impact of the combination of all our efforts to target these highly violent groups,” Moore said. “Hopefully you will see that payoff by the end of the year in the reduction of homicides and shootings."

Familiar faces

Although there are no official statistics on the arrest histories of homicide defendants, law enforcement officials frequently note that most murder suspects in Baton Rouge are repeat offenders.

“We’re arresting the same people over and over again,” Morse said.

“Just about every murder defendant has been arrested for a violent offense,” Moore added. “I know several of these defendants were out on bond.”

Both Morse and Moore partly attribute the cycle to the current bond setting process and a shortage of prosecutors.

Due to funding issues, Moore's office has just 54 assistant district attorneys compared to 88 in Orleans Parish and 75 in Jefferson Parish. This had led to a backlog of more than 11,000 cases.

“They’re so backlogged, it’s hard to do anything with the cases,” Morse said.

Since July 2024, four commissioners of the 19th Judicial District Court have been responsible for setting bonds in East Baton Rouge — a role previously handled by eight district judges. While this change has sped up the bond process, Moore says his office has struggled to keep up.

“Now the judges just sit in court and want to hear motions and trials,” Moore said. “I can’t keep up with that, because I also have to staff the commissioners’ court.”

Meanwhile, officers feel many of the arrests they make are for naught.

“We have not been happy with some of the bonds the commissioners have been setting,” Morse said. “If you let somebody go with a low bond for attempted homicide, then you're sending out a message that it's OK to shoot people.”

While the DA continues to seek more funding from the city and state, Morse said the police department is looking to strategies used in New Orleans to manage caseloads. Last year, with a push from Gov. Jeff Landry, state police officers were brought into New Orleans through the controversial but effective Troop NOLA program to assist with arrests. At the same time, the Attorney General’s Office helped with prosecutions to avoid case backlogs.

“Getting quick turnarounds, higher bonds, quicker trials — that really set an example and started bringing their numbers down,” Morse said.

Targeting problem groups

Of those suspected of fatally pulling the trigger in the parish so far this year, eight are juveniles, while another five juveniles were among the victims. In those instances, law enforcement officials are inclined to point to broader societal issues: poverty, education, lack of community resources.

“That's an alarming number when you are looking at 15- and 16-year-olds picking up guns and killing people,” Morse said. “There are a lot of systems in place that have to have failed that 15-year-old.”

Truancy, defined as four or more absences a year, continues to plague Baton Rouge. It was an issue Moore campaigned heavily on when he was first elected in 2009, and since 2020, rates have fluctuated between 55% and 60% for East Baton Rouge Public schools.

“Until we really get a handle on truancy, we’re not going to get a handle on that number,” he said.

Broadly speaking, officials say that males ages 14 to 24 commit the majority of violent crimes in Baton Rouge.

“Those small groups of people cause 90% of our problems,” said former Police Chief LeDuff.

LeDuff, now assistant chief administrative officer for Mayor Sid Edwards, is leading an effort to revive a once-promising community violence intervention program targeting younger offenders.

From 2013 to 2017, the federally funded BRAVE program aimed to steer gang-involved youth away from violence, but it was discontinued after funding mismanagement controversies. The city later rebranded the effort as a nonprofit initiative called TRUCE, focused more on providing community resources. A hallmark of both programs was the “call-in,” where suspected gang members and other troubled youth were confronted by officials and offered support services.

Now, city officials hope to combine elements from both models. The idea is to partner with law enforcement and community interventionists to identify individuals at risk and offer them both a carrot and a stick before violence occurs.

“This is the initiative that brought us success 13 years ago. We are bringing it back,” LeDuff said. “BRAVE was enforcement with a little bit of service. TRUCE was more about services. This program will be a mix of all of it.”

Aishala Burgess, who led TRUCE, says the new program will offer wraparound services, including substance abuse and mental health support, school intervention, rental and utility assistance, and parenting classes.

“Anything a family would consider a barrier, is what we are going to try to provide wraparound services to and for,” Burgess said.

The program, still in the infancy of its planning stages, is sparse on funding details, but the city has just signed a contract with the National Network of Safe Communities, an organization that has partnered with Chicago, Boston, and until eight years ago, Baton Rouge.

In the thick of bare-bones budgets, Morse and Moore are both ready to embrace any additional support — old or new — to keep homicides trending in the right direction.

“It's not an issue we can arrest our way out of,” Morse said. “We need help on the front end with community resources. We need help in the middle with people calling crime stoppers. And we need help on the back end with prosecutors.”

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that District Attorney Hillar Moore and Baton Rouge Police Chief Thomas Morse partially attributed homicides in Baton Rouge to lenient judges. While both officials cited the prevalence of repeat offenders among homicide defendants and expressed concerns about low bond settings, neither specifically referenced judges or attributed increased homicides to judicial leniency.

The Advocate regrets the error.