Shortage of Baton Rouge detectives driving concern among residents

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“They’re just overloaded and they need more help,” Moore said. “But they’re not alone, it’s the intelligence department, uniform patrol. But the ones you see most are homicide detectives.”

There had had been 31 homicides inside the Baton Rouge city limits so far in 2018, up eight from last year at this time, according to records maintained by The Advocate.

The vast majority of the parish’s homicides happen within city limits, meaning the Baton Rouge Police Department’s homicide division responds to the incident and works the investigation.

Moore said he is concerned how the shortage of homicide detectives — and therefore the time and energy they can spend solving cases — can affect the public’s perception of the effectiveness of law enforcement, especially as the murder rate continues to rise. He noted that detectives are also tasked with responding to other suspicious deaths, including suicides and drug overdoses which continue to increase amid the nation’s opioid crisis.

“The inability to solve cases, particularly murders and rapes, does surely have an impact on the community,” Moore said. “It also leads to potentially a lack of cooperation, because if they don’t believe police can get the job done then someone else gets the job done.”

Baton Rouge Police have cleared 45 percent of the city’s homicides thus far in 2018, about the same proportion they had cleared at the end of 2017 — however still well below the national average, which hovers just below 60 percent. A homicide is considered cleared when an arrest is made or when the alleged perpetrator dies, not after a conviction.

McGarner said he doesn’t believe the shortage of detectives has affected the department’s clearance rate, which he said is a testament to how hard the current detectives are working.

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