LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Inspector General Edward Harness, the lead of the Louisville Civilian and Accountability Board, announced Wednesday that he's opening a department-wide investigation related to Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) detectives.
The board was created in 2021, following the death of Breonna Taylor, to review complaints against LMPD and increase transparency and accountability within the agency.
For the first time since its birth, the board took their meetings on the road, face-to-face with the public at the Louisville Public Library.
At the meeting, Harness announced a new department-wide investigation.
“We are announcing to the board that we are going to undertake an investigation related to LMPD detectives – selection, training, investigation, and case load," he said. "It’s based on reoccurring themes we hear from officers and detectives that we investigate. We want to take a look at patterns and practices department-wide related to the subjects.”
Margaret Mahomes lives in the Shawnee neighborhood; she told WHAS11 she attends the meetings to become better informed and relay the information back to her neighbors.
"We’ve got to know what’s going on and stop saying it’s hearsay, we’ve got to come and listen to the people that are involved in making decisions and doing these investigations," she said. "The more knowledge I obtain, from personally being around these meetings myself, I can spread the word. And then get more of our community involved because we lack knowledge because we don’t get involved, and that’s just the truth."
The board also addressed their review of LMPD hiring standards and practices. LMPD Sgt. Justin Bickett outlined the agency's processes for recruiting and hiring officers.
"Within the past two calendar years, and I can’t compare past that because I wasn’t in the office then, over 50% of our applications were minority or female,” he said. “Do our academy classes reflect our applicant demographics? No, not necessarily.”
He said LMPD has identified physical requirements that may be a disparity for female applicants, which is being combatted by the creation of a female fitness program for recruits. He said female hiring remains hard.
Bickett said LMPD had over 1,400 applications for police recruits in 2023, but a very small percentage of those made it to the testing phase. He claims the highest drop-off rate for recruits is due to "failure to schedule testing."
To counteract this, the department has devoted more personnel to having one-on-one engagements with potential recruits.
“Their baseline characteristics that everyone wants a police officer to have…trustworthiness, integrity, all of these things…those are the things we look for in people," he said. "I think there might be a perception because there’s such a shortage that we’ll just hire anybody. That is not the case. LMPD is still strict on the standard of who we want patrolling our streets, it’s too important.”
The 2023 annual report was also a topic of conversation at the meeting. Now that the board has approved the report, Harness will bring it before each Metro Council member individually to answer any questions personally. The report should be available to the public within a few days.
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