BATON ROUGE – Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome has named Thomas Morse the next Chief of Police for Baton Rouge, choosing her successor to the retiring Murphy Paul.

Morse will take the top position at BRPD, concluding a search process that started with the July announcement from Paul that he would be stepping down from the post he assumed in early 2018.

In early November, an advisory committee that interviewed and scrutinized the applicants recommended five finalists to Broome.

Though a decision was expected later that month, the process has lagged into December, with the departing chief staying on additional weeks to allow for a direct transition to the new leadership.

Broome, in early December, said she was committed to hiring one of the five finalists and said that she did not anticipate re-starting the search process.

The short list from which she made her selection included: BRPD Captain David Wallace, BRPD Sergeant and Training Academy Director Sharon Douglas, BRPD Deputy Chief Myron Daniels, BRPD Commander in Training Services Division Thomas Morse, Jr., and Thomas Glover, a former police chief in Lafayette.

The change in leadership comes at a challenging time.

While City-Parish officials tout reforms within the department and drops in certain crime metrics – including homicides – BRPD has been embroiled in a scandal involving allegations of interrogation misconduct and abuse of suspects.

A senior department official, Deputy Chief Troy Lawrence, Sr., was among those charged with crimes in recent months, and the department disbanded its Street Crimes Unit in the wake of the revelations.

The City-Parish is facing numerous lawsuits related to the alleged misconduct.