LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- The controversy over Dr. Kevin Cosby’s traffic stop is prompting a larger conversation in Louisville: Racial profiling, or a decrease in crime?
The President of Simmons College and longtime leader of St. Stephen Church said he was pulled over by Louisville Metro Police in the West End for what he claims is no reason.
An investigation is now underway to see if policy and procedures were followed.
“If you stop a Kevin Cosby, that’s telling you nobody is safe,” said Dr. Ricky Jones, the Chair of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville, who questions this particular stop.
But First Division Major Eric Johnson defended the traffic stop in an email to Councilman Bill Hollander, who posted his concerns about it on social media.
Johnson said aggressive patrolling is the reason behind decreased crime in his division, pointing to statistics that show a decline in violent crime over the last two years. He said homicides are down 85 percent in the last 20 months, and non-fatal shootings are down 70 percent.
Dr. Jones told WHAS 11 News that there's no correlation.
“One thing has nothing to do with the other. It's an excuse to condone and normalize harassment. And that's problematic.”
Johnson called the traffic stop "the exact action I've asked my officers to take in these neighborhoods" saying Reverend Cosby "isn't immune from traffic violations."
In the video posted by Dr. Cosby's daughter, you hear the officer say the reverend made an improper turn and had an illegal plastic rim around his license plate.
“This is an officer who stops one of Louisville's most prominent black citizens and his wife and says to him very early on in the stop, ‘what are y'all up to? What are y'all getting into tonight?’ So that wasn't about an improper turn,” Dr. Jones said.
Metro Council President and former police officer David James also weighed in. He told WHAS11 News that he does not believe "aggressive patrolling" has been the only driving factor for the decline in crime.
“I think using the technique of pretextual stops is something that’s legal, I think that sometimes you get lucky and you find something in a car that you may not have found otherwise, however, when you use pretextual and highly aggressive law enforcement techniques on only a certain segment geographically of the community, then that area of the community starts to feel a certain way about the police and it creates other societal and economic issues for people who are affected by it,” Council President James explained.
It's a sensitive topic right now: claims of reducing crime but some say at what cost? It is a fine line.