Federal grant to expand BRAVE Project

Mayor Kip Holden announced today that the city-parish has been awarded a $1 million federal grant to expand its Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination Project. Launched in May 2012, the BRAVE Project—which zeroes in on a small number of chronic offenders in a specific area—has thus far been limited to the 70805 ZIP code in north Baton Rouge. The grant funding announced today will allow the crime-fighting initiative to expand into the 70802 ZIP code, which includes the downtown area and portions of Old South Baton Rouge. 70802 is bound by Choctaw Drive to the north, Park Drive to the east, the LSU campus to the south and the Mississippi River to the east. Holden and other local law enforcement officials will formally announce the grant award and program expansion at a press conference Monday. Baton Rouge Chief of Police Carl Dabadie has said he expects the FBI’s forthcoming batch of Uniform Crime Reporting statistics to show a 40% to 45% drop in violent crime in the 70805 zip code area due to the success of Project BRAVE. —Staff report