LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Hours before Louisville Mayor-elect Craig Greenberg announcing his senior leadership team, community members were calling on the new administration to bring change to Metro Corrections.
One year ago, three people died in just one week at the downtown facility.
After that a group of community leaders -- from the ACLU to local family advocates -- created the "Community Stakeholders to End Deaths at LMDC."
"Louisville is in the throes of one of its most devastating humanitarian crises in the city's history," Interim Executive Director of the ACLU, Amber Duke, said.
The group has been vocal about the conditions at the downtown corrections facility and calling on Greenberg to end LMDC's contract with Wellpath, the facility's current medical provider.
In the past year, the Community Stakeholders have met with Jail Director Jerry Collins several times.
ACLU Policy Strategist Kungu Njuguna says those conversations have been productive and have led to actual change inside the jail, but there's one major issues jail leaders and the advocacy group disagree on -- building a new jail.
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) representatives and other jail leaders have called the current building outdated, saying a new facility needs to be built to ensure safety.
However, the Community Stakeholders say to end deaths at LMDC, they want Greenberg's administration to back off those plans.
"We are calling on Mayor-elect Greenberg to publicly and unequivocally state that his administration will not seek to fund or build a new jail," Njuguna said.
The group emphasized that they want to see more mental health access in the jail and wish that more funds would be directed to programs at Metro Corrections and not diverted to building a new multimillion dollar jail.
During his leadership announcement Tuesday, Greenberg named outgoing Metro Council President David James as the city's new Deputy Mayor of Emergency Services.
James will oversee Metro Corrections among other city departments. He said part of the problem at the facility have had to do with previous leadership, but also engagement within the jail's community.
"A lot of it has to do with engagement and to make sure that we treat the residents of the jail in a way that we protect them, but we also make a point to protecting the staff," he said.
As for the possibility of a new jail? Greenberg said it's not something at the top of his priority list.
"We have a lot of priorities in our city, and addressing the challenges that the corrections department is facing is certainly high up there on the list," Greenberg said. "We have had a crisis in our jail. There are many things we need to do to address that, building a new jail is not one of my top priorities at this moment, but fixing the crisis in our corrections system is."
Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.