BATON ROUGE — The Baton Rouge Police Department is facing a reduced budget for 2025.

The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's office says it is also expecting a decrease in its budget next year.

Both departments spoke before the EBR Metro Council on Monday, saying what some of the repercussions of the decreases will be for them.

Arguably the biggest result of BRPD's decreased budget is that they're getting rid of their ShotSpotter program. That will be in effect on Jan. 1.

BRPD has been using the ShotSpotter program since 2007. It is a detection system that uses microphones and sensors to alert law enforcement of shots fired.

Baton Rouge Police Chief TJ Morse says there are a few reasons it is being cut. The biggest is cost.

"That was going to be about $400,000 to $425,000 for next year, so it was a big-time item that we could get rid of," Morse said.

On average, ShotSpotter can cost nearly $100,000 per square mile each year. Morse also says the ones they have don't cover that much space, two of which are even outside the parish.

"It's not over the whole city is another important thing. We're talking I think 7 square miles. Yes," Morse said.

Morse says the department could not find any documented cases of ShotSpotter being the only report of finding a gunshot victim to save someone's life. He added if they were able to find gunshot victims only because of ShotSpotter, they wouldn't be having this conversation.

District Attorney Hillar Moore says he understood why the department is getting rid of it, but says if the money was there, he would prefer to not only keep it but expand it.

"It does not take a day off or a night off. It does always detect rounds being fired and does it fairly quickly, and in my opinion, fairly accurately," Moore said.

Another result of the smaller budget is that BRPD will be getting rid of its mounted patrol division. This is due to the upkeep and the cost of horses.
The chief wants people to know that even with the cuts, there won't be a deduction in service.

"We're not going to be decreasing our officers on the street. We're not going to be decreasing our detectives or anything like that," Morse said.

The department is also working with the Mayor's office to find more money.

"You know another 1.2 through some ARP funds. Another 400 and something thousand dollars through some other interest-earned account money too so that our general budget might say we're decreasing by that much, but they're gonna try to work with us to offset some of those costs," Moore said.

As for the District Attorney's office, Moore says it's becoming more expensive to hire new people than it is to keep people around, which is also becoming more difficult. He says he's lost decades of experience in a matter of months.

They showed a PowerPoint presentation, showing comparisons of where they are at, compared to parishes of identical size such as Orleans and Jefferson.

The DA's office says they requested a budget of a little over $ 9 million for 2025, which would be about a four percent increase from the previous year. What was proposed to them, was around $8.2 million, nearly $800,000 less.

Moore says even the $9 million was far below what he believes his office should be at.

"An office our size, our budget should be around $24 million. On a good year, We're at 16 with all the additional money that we receive from grants, but our base budget is around $14 million a year," Moore said.

Moore says they are prepared for a decrease, but it hurts them from a technological standpoint.