Not Giving Up: BRPD Chief T.J. Morse on the Continued Search for Ja’Derrius Minnieweather

So I was telling you early on, we are in conversations with the family.

And when I say family, I'm not saying the mom.

The mom, a long time ago, asked for permission.

some space.

We are going to respect that.

So we have not crossed that boundary and reached out to her.

Other family members have reached out to us directly.

So I wanted to bring up some of those concerns that they're bringing to us.

And like I said, a lot of people don't understand how things work.

First off, One of the things is that, hey, he went missing on June the 5th.

That when did you guys start the investigation? You've already kind of answered, but it wasn't put out to the media till that Sunday.

Why?

Um, just part of the investigation process, right.

Um, as more information is being undercover uncovered, you know, Hey, is this just a missing kid? Is this a kid that ran away? Is this kid that just doesn't want to be contacted? Um, and so, you know, as we get more information, as we start interviewing people, as we start uncovering more evidence, um, That's why homicide was brought in on Saturday.

And then finally, all right, hey, we need to, you know, we're trying to solve it ourselves.

And then, all right, we get into a dead end.

Let's reach out to more people and let's try to get more people involved.

Let's get the media involved.

Let's see who else in the area has camera footage or have seen something or heard something and start those processes.

But we definitely, you know, just as part of police work, there's some things that we don't release immediately immediately.

We have a search warrant or arrest warrant for somebody.

We're not putting the arrest warrant out into the news immediately because we want to find that person without them knowing we're looking for them.

Talk to me about the family has said there's video evidence and the beating was caught on video or other videos and that Baton Rouge Police and the district attorney refuses to share that information with the family.

There is, again, you know, I'm trying to tiptoe around preserving the case because right now, you know, along with finding Jadarius, but, you know, making sure that we get a conviction in this case is a top priority.

I can say that there is no video of the homicide occurring.