Even though it’s working to increase community policing in the city, Together Baton Rouge hasn’t taken a position on one of the most hotly debated proposals to come before the Metro Council in recent weeks—a residency requirement for new hires by the Baton Rouge Police Department.
Together Baton Rouge lead organizer Broderick Bagert says taking the time to internally research and debate the proposal is an important part of the group’s process for evaluating it.
“The speed at which this has moved has made that impossible,” says Bagert, whose group is calling for increased community policing, among other initiatives, in the wake of the killing of Alton Sterling by police, and the subsequent murders of three law enforcement officers by a lone gunman, who shot a total of six officers.
Together Baton Rouge has adopted an initiative at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Louisiana Governor’s Office to lead a community policing initiative called Project Spirit.
The Metro Council spent three hours at its meeting on Wednesday listening to public comments and debating the proposal, which would require all BRPD officers hired after the start of next year to live in East Baton Rouge Parish.
Metro Councilwoman Chauna Banks, who originally brought the proposal to the council in late July, says a residency requirement is the foundation for advancing community policing efforts. She says officers need to understand and know the neighborhoods they police, and that’s difficult to do if they live outside the parish.
Opponents argue the proposal limits the hiring pool for a department that’s already in need of additional officers. They also say that living within a community does not necessarily make someone a better police officer.
Bagert says a residency requirement is one of many methods other communities have used to address police reform.
“Community policing is effectively good policing,” Bagert says.
Even if the residency proposal fails, Bagert says the issues it’s attempting to address—a lack of diversity in the police force, and whether police understand and identify with the communities they police—will remain.
“Those are going to stick around and need to be addressed (despite) whatever happens to the residency requirement,” he says.
The council deferred the proposal on Wednesday, with some members saying they hope to rework it and gain enough support for approval when it comes before the council again.
Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the council introduced a proposed 90-day building moratorium for a stretch of Highland Road and OK’d appropriating $250,000 to the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority for the design of a transit hub in Mid City that will include a station for a proposed commuter rail line from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.
—Alexandria Burris
