BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Almost one month into the year, East Baton Rouge has had 10 homicides and before that number can increase state leaders are taking a harder look at the justice system. The Capital City closed out 2020 at 170 homicides.
Attorney General Jeff Landry said reducing the amount of crime is bigger than law enforcement, especially when it comes to repeat offenders. He held what is scheduled to be one of many crime meetings to bring state and local officials together to tackle the rising issue in the city.
“We want to take Baton Rouge off the 10 most deadliest cities in the country. Let me make sure you understand, the people in this room, they are doing their job, they are making the arrests,” said Landry.
He stressed that keeping offenders off the streets is up to the prosecutors and judges. Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul agreed change is needed to end the vicious cycle.
“That’s one of the challenges we talked about today, that today’s victim is tomorrow’s suspect and today’s suspect can be tomorrow’s victim, this retaliatory shooting that’s happening in our city,” said Paul.
“We got a lot of work to do, and we got a lot of work to undo. We didn’t get here in one day, these communities are ours, these streets are not for the judges, these streets are not for the DA, these are for the police,” said Baker Chief of Police Carl Dunn.
Everyone sitting at the table had the same goal of making Baton Rouge safer for everyone no matter what neighborhood you reside in.
