BATON ROUGE - The federal government has denied a request from Baton Rouge officials to extend an area crime-fighting initiative.

According to Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome's communications director, Janene Tate, the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination project (BRAVE) has been denied further funding by the federal government.  Federal officials noted the grant already had been extended once, and the city-parish had left more than $1 million earmarked for the project unused.

Those unused dollars will now expire at the end of the summer.  

James Gilmore, who serves as assistant chief administrative officer to the mayor-president, was informed by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention  about the denial three weeks ago.

Gilmore was reportedly told that the initiative had a history of reporting the performance data late or not reporting it at all.

City-parish officials say they now plan to seek private funding to continue the program.