The Baton Rouge Police Department is stepping up patrols and deploying as many as 20 officers at a time in the Tigerland area. A spokesman for the BRPD tells Daily Report the move comes in response to concerns about an increase in crime in the iconic neighborhood of apartments and night clubs, which was a popular residential area with LSU students from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s, but has since deteriorated into one of the city’s pockets of crime and blight.
“It is not that there has been an increase in crime or a spike in crime,” Cpl. Tommy Stubbs says. “But there is a lot more concern about it.”
Stubbs says in the past two weeks or so, the BRPD has launched two initiatives specifically focused on Tigerland. One is the Safe Streets Task Force, a group of seven to 10 officers who will primarily patrol areas in and around the college bars looking for alcohol-related violations. The other is a street operations task force, which will deploy as many as 15 or 20 officers at a time, depending on availability.
“They are going to focus more on drugs, violent crime, proactive patrols in the area,” Stubbs says. “Those guys do more covert stuff, and they adjust their numbers as needed.”
The street operations task force is funded by a federal grant, and the officers assigned to it work in neighborhoods throughout the city, Stubbs says. The increased focus on Tigerland will not take existing officers away from their normal, district patrols but will utilize the officers already assigned to the street operations division, he adds.
The issue of Tigerland crime and blight came up at a mayoral forum last week. At that time, Mayor Kip Holden said plans were in the works to beef up police patrols in the area, but he could not provide specifics.
The department is also working on a long-term plan to better monitor potential criminal activity in the area. Police Chief Dewayne White recently met with apartment building owners to discuss ways of allowing the department to connect to the security cameras on Tigerland apartment buildings.
“They are working on ways that would enable us to interface with the cameras at the apartment complexes,” Stubbs says. “That way we could see the crime as it’s occurring.”
