The Trump Justice Department is bringing the fight against violent crime to Baton Rouge. Attorney General Todd Blanche traveled to Louisiana on Wednesday to designate East Baton Rouge as a Model City and announce that the Department of Justice is investing nearly $64 million through the Model Cities Initiative “to help the people of East Baton Rouge Parish reduce violent crime while also making this great city safer and stronger.” The money flows over the next three years, with the next two months focused on operational plans and law enforcement surges beginning in the first weeks of 2027.
Blanche laid out why Baton Rouge needs help. “Over two decades the homicide rate in Baton Rouge has averaged roughly three times that of large U.S. cities,” he said. “From 2021 through 2025 in the city of Baton Rouge, police responded to, listen to this, over 1,300 non-fatal shootings, over 12,000 shots fired calls, and over 1,200 armed robberies. In that same period, aggravated assaults increased by a staggering 320%.” His message to families was simple: “We’re here to help.” His message to criminals was simpler: “This sort of violent behavior will not be tolerated in East Baton Rouge Parish.”
The plan puts real resources on the street. The funding will expand patrol and investigative capacity, add personnel for new specialized prosecution units, upgrade a violent crime unit, and boost the police department’s real-time crime-fighting technology. “More law enforcement officers will be on the beat here in Baton Rouge, and they’ll be working with better equipment, better technology, and better information,” Blanche said, so “criminals are held accountable and the great people of Baton Rouge can feel safe on their streets.” Resources will focus on 10 hot spots where 46 percent of the city’s violent and drug-related crime occurs.
It is the same playbook that is already working. “Just as the face of crime has changed dramatically since our surge of resources in Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee, the lessons that we learned there will apply to these model cities,” Blanche said. He called the program “just one of many steps the Trump Administration has taken to support our law enforcement officers and restore the rule of law” in America’s neighborhoods, and he thanked Gov. Jeff Landry, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, Senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy and local leaders who stood with him.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said the people who truly keep families safe were on that stage. “They’re not political. They want less children dying. That is not a controversial statement,” he said. Instead of Washington bureaucrats “sitting in our ivory tower” picking winners, the department asked local law enforcement what they need. Blanche closed with a promise: “I have every confidence that together we will make this community safer, stronger, and more prosperous for generations of Louisianans to come.”
