Local businessman and political activist Lane Grigsby is planning to mount a campaign to reorganize city-parish government in Baton Rouge—specifically, to push for a merger of the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office with the Baton Rouge Police Department.
Grigsby is not the first to suggest that a single, combined law enforcement agency would be more effective and efficient in combating Baton Rouge’s growing crime problem. But he may be the first person to put financial and political muscle behind seriously trying to tackle the issue.
“What we’re going to look at in the spring, regardless of who gets elected mayor, is reorganizing our plan of government, specifically our law enforcement,” says Grigsby, who is working with the Northshore consulting firm Innovative Advertising on research and strategy related to the campaign. Grigsby points to Charlotte, N.C., and Louisville, Ky., as cities that have successfully combined their municipal and county law enforcement agencies in the past decade and have seen their crime rates decrease.
“It has made significant differences there,” he says. “I believe honestly if we were to combine the sheriff’s office with the police department here and put one sheriff in charge, we would see a real difference as well.”
Grigsby says he has spoken to Sheriff Sid Gautreaux about his plan and the sheriff supports it. Though he has not spoken to Police Chief Dewayne White, he does not anticipate the BRPD will support it. Efforts to contact the EBRSO and BRPD before press time were unsuccessful.
Grigsby’s governmental reorganization campaign will also push for two other well-worn ideas that have never gotten past the discussion stage: privatizing the Department of Public Works and creating a new, at-large Metro Council district.
With respect to the former, Grigsby says the cost savings from privatizing DPW would be tremendous for the parish—at least 20%, he believes. As for the addition of an at-large council district, he says such a move would better serve the parish and aid in uniting the fractured council. So far the campaign is in its infancy and has no roll-out date, but Grigsby says Innovative Advertising is “doing their research and trying to convince everybody this is the right thing to do.”
