Lafayette Police Department
LPD polices the City of Lafayette — not the whole parish, which is the Sheriff’s job. It runs on $52.8M in FY 2025-26, employs 310 uniformed officers out of 364 authorized positions, and spends about two-thirds of its budget on people. Here’s where the rest goes, and what the department has told the councils it plans to do with it.
- 310
- uniformed officers
- $52.8M
- department budget, FY 2025-26
- 364
- total authorized positions
- 6
- stations, once Precinct 2 opens
Who runs it
Paul Trouard
Chief of Police
The chief is appointed by the Mayor-President and runs a department organized into four budget divisions — Administration, Services, Patrol, and Criminal Investigation. LPD is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). Its budget is set by the City Council, not the Parish Council: LPD is a city department funded almost entirely out of the City General Fund.
Where the money goes
$52,795,894 adopted for FY 2025-26, down 10.1% from the $58,728,868 budgeted the year before. That drop is almost entirely capital — last year’s budget carried a much larger equipment and vehicle line. Day-to-day spending on people went up.
- Personnel66.2%$34,936,307
Salaries, benefits, retirement, retiree health, accrued leave
- Capital outlay14.3%$7,553,675
Vehicles, equipment, the Precinct 2 substation
- Operating11.1%$5,842,627
Purchased services, materials & supplies, external appropriations
- Uninsured losses8.5%$4,463,285
Risk Management claims — self-insured liability
By division
Nearly everything sits under Administration — that division carries patrol salaries and the bulk of the department’s personnel costs, so the smaller Patrol line is not the cost of policing the street.
- Administration80.4%$42,449,691
- Services14.9%$7,852,805
- Patrol3.2%$1,706,860
- Criminal Investigation1.5%$786,538
The full line items
| Expenditure | FY 2025-26 adopted |
|---|---|
| Personnel salaries | $22,928,919 |
| Retirement system | $8,529,769 |
| Capital outlay | $7,553,675 |
| Uninsured losses | $4,463,285 |
| Purchased services | $3,629,374 |
| Employee benefits | $2,925,438 |
| Materials & supplies | $2,204,753 |
| Retiree health insurance | $460,940 |
| Accrued sick & annual leave | $91,241 |
| External appropriations | $3,500 |
| Miscellaneous | $5,000 |
| Total | $52,795,894 |
How the department grades itself
LPD sets its own benchmarks and reports against them in the budget book each year. These are the department’s numbers, not an outside audit.
| Measure | Benchmark | FY 23-24 actual | FY 24-25 est. | FY 2025-26 goal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UCR homicide clearance rate | 97% | 97% | 100% | 100% |
| Personnel staffing capacity | 92% | 91% | 91% | 92% |
| Traffic fatalities | 0 | 23 | 17 | 13 |
| Camera views in service | 2,000 | 1,553 | 1,868 | 2,150 |
What it did last year
- Cleared 100% of homicide cases, against a 97% benchmark.
- Installed 315 additional camera views across the city using $550,000 in camera funding.
- Leased 71 replacement vehicles with $1,144,000 in vehicle funding.
What it plans for FY 2025-26
- Open a Precinct 2 substation, taking the department from five stations to six.
- Spend $400,000 on a Lenco BearCat tactical armored vehicle for the S.W.A.T. team.
- Renegotiate the expiring Axon contract — replacing Taser 7 devices with Taser 10 and equipping more patrol officers, and upgrading body cameras from Axon Body 3 to Body 4.
Ten years of spending and staffing
Appropriations excluding capital, so year-to-year equipment swings don’t distort the trend. Since 2017 the department’s operating budget has grown about 32% while officer headcount rose from 266 to 310.
| Fiscal year | Appropriation | Salaries | Total positions | Officers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $35,908,151 | $15,735,139 | 326 | 266 |
| 2018 | $34,584,377 | $15,535,260 | 329 | 270 |
| 2019 | $36,004,163 | $15,976,231 | 349 | 288 |
| 2020 | $36,662,408 | $16,038,223 | 350 | 288 |
| 2021 | $39,881,899 | $18,931,485 | 344 | 285 |
| 2022 | $41,719,685 | $19,691,302 | 361 | 302 |
| 2023 | $43,768,563 | $19,477,893 | 364 | 304 |
| 2024 | $44,097,606 | $20,099,999 | 369 | 309 |
| 2025 | $48,066,498 | $20,259,147 | 364 | 310 |
| 2026 | $47,436,310 | $20,569,686 | 364 | 310 |
The City Council reviews LPD’s budget line by line at departmental review meetings each fall, and the joint public hearing takes comment on the whole budget before adoption.
Budget figures are adopted appropriations for FY 2025-26 (November 1, 2025 – October 31, 2026) from Lafayette Consolidated Government’s adopted operating and five-year capital improvement budget, by department — Police Department, Dept. 030. Adopted means budgeted, not spent; actual expenditures land in the following year’s book. Statistical information, performance measures, and departmental goals are the department’s own reporting as printed in that document. Leadership and contact details come from LPD’s department page. All LCG budget documents are posted at lafayettela.gov/budget. Spotted something off? Let us know.