BATON ROUGE - Crews from the State Department of Transportation installed metal gates under another panhandling hot spot under the interstate on Wednesday afternoon.

The first fences went up in July under I-10 on Siegen Lane, after the state received countless complaints of drug use and illicit activity. Jennifer Richardson, founder of Keep Tiger Town Beautiful, said her volunteer group picked up hundreds of needles and mounds of trash from the area that they dubbed the "Siegen Hell hole." 

At the time, DOTD acknowledged there was an abundance of unhoused individuals on Siegen, but said the barricades were a low-cost safety measure to "decrease foot traffic." The metal gates cost around $25,000 each to install. 

In September, volunteers with Keep Tiger Town Beautiful found two guns along Bluebonnet Boulevard. One of those guns was found at Bluebonnet and I-10, right where the new fences went up Wednesday.

According to DOTD spokesperson Rodney Mallett, the barricades will be fully installed by the end of the year. As of now, the department is not looking to place barricades anywhere else.