Press Releases

Congressman Garret Graves (South Louisiana) announced today that the City of Baton Rouge will receive a federal, Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI) grant through the U.S. Department of Justice. The $699,831 reward will help Baton Rouge law enforcement implement new tactics and emerging technology to fight crime and improve safety across our community.

"Right now in Baton Rouge, the statistics show you have a 1 in 96 chance of becoming the victim of violent crime compared to 1 in 180 statewide, and a 1 in 17 chance of becoming a victim of property crime – that's not okay," said Graves. "This funding is going to provide the Baton Rouge Police Department additional resources to help enhance their operations, allow them to use new, strategic and data-driven approaches and social media to prevent and fight violent crime, and support our law enforcement in the work they do every single day to make Baton Rouge safer."

The City of Baton Rouge will use award funds to test the utilization of risk terrain modeling as a mechanism for reducing violent crime risks in Baton Rouge; utilize emerging social media technology to engage the community, enhance community/police relations, and elicit investigative support by residents.

Project Description:

Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI), Purpose Area 1: Innovative Approaches provides resources to support projects to implement and test innovative approaches to operational challenges and violent crime reduction. SPI grant recipients will develop innovative, data driven approaches to challenges currently confronting law enforcement agencies. Recipients must: 1) describe the innovative, data-driven approach to be implemented; 2) create an action plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach, for which an applicant may engage a research partner to create the plan; 3) identify a specific violent crime problem to address; 4) develop a prevention, mitigation, or response strategy to address the problem; 5) evaluate the project; and 6) assess and report the results to BJA for public availability.

The evaluation design must include outcome measures capable of informing a credible assessment of the effectiveness of the strategies.

SPI is part of the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Suite of Programs, which is focused on reducing violent crime. These initiatives will coordinate proactively with the PSN team in the respective district of the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) to enhance collaboration and strengthen the commitment to reducing violent crime.