Louisville Metro Police headquarters. (LMPD)

LOUISVILLE — Paul Humphrey will serve as the next Louisville Metro Police Department chief after filling the role on an interim basis since June.?

His predecessor, Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, resigned in late June after being placed on administrative leave amid an investigation of her handling of sexual harassment allegations within the department.?

“The sworn and professional staff of LMPD work tirelessly each day to make Louisville a safer city,” Humphrey, a University of Louisville graduate, said in a statement. “It is a tremendous honor to serve our residents, business community, and visitors.”?

Humphrey, who lives in Louisville with his wife and three children, joined the police force in 2006 as a patrol officer and then worked as a patrol supervisor in four divisions, according to Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg’s office. He became commander of the city’s SWAT team in 2017, “is credited with restructuring the SWAT Team, creating a new culture of improvement and accountability while managing the team’s training, tactical planning, and operating budget,” the mayor’s office said.?

Humphrey has worked in several other LMPD roles. He also sits on the board of St. Xavier High School, where he attended, and Kentucky Law Enforcement Council, according to the mayor’s office.?

Attorney General Russell Coleman said the appointment “has the potential to be the most impactful public safety decision made by a Metro Louisville Mayor during my time as Attorney General.”

“We look forward to zealous collaboration with Chief Humphrey and the essential agency he now leads to reduce violent crime, effectively implement Group Violence Intervention (GVI) and keep Louisville families safe,” Coleman said in a statement.

Greenberg called Humphrey “thoughtful, fair, and decisive.”

“He has earned my respect, and he has earned the respect and trust of this community, including the hardworking men and women of the Louisville Metro Police Department,” Greenberg said. “He understands the importance of community policing and he will demand accountability from his officers, his command staff, and himself. LMPD needs stability in its leadership, and I’m confident Chief Humphrey will bring that stability.”

Humphrey’s promotion follows several high-profile controversies in the department.

The department has had six leaders since 2020.That year, following the police killing of Breonna Taylor, Louisville saw months of protests. Taylor was a 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot while police served a no-knock warrant. In 2024, police arrested professional golfer?Scottie Scheffler during the PGA Championship. Those charges were later dismissed.

The City of Louisville earlier this year began?negotiating a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to correct civil rights violations by the LMPD.

This story may update.?

Florence Police officers were dispatched to a house on Ridgecrest Drive at around 2:50 a.m. Saturday but the suspect had driven away by the time they arrived. (Florence Police Department)

Five people — four victims and the suspect — have died following a shooting that occurred in Florence early in the morning on Saturday, July 6. Three more people are in the hospital but are in stable condition, according to Florence Police, who are characterizing the incident as a mass shooting.?

Police officers were dispatched to a house on Ridgecrest Drive at around 2:50 a.m. Saturday. By the time the police arrived, the suspect had already driven away from the scene, a written police statement reads. Four victims were pronounced dead at the scene and three more were transported to UC Hospital, where they are currently in stable condition and expected to make a full recovery.

Florence Police Chief Jeff Mallery identified the four victims at a press conference Saturday afternoon: 20-year-old Shane Miller, 20-year-old Hayden Rybicki, 19-year-old Delaney Eary and 44-year-old Melissa Parrett. One of the victims was the home owner.?

“Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the victims,” Mallery said at the press conference, visibly emotional.

LINK nky’s content sharing partner WCPO had crews on the scene and interviewed a neighbor, who said at around 2:15 a.m. after he left a party, he heard what he first thought were fireworks. At the press conference, Mallery added that police officers had heard gun shots upon their arrival at the house.

A 21st birthday party was being held for Parrett’s son at the time of the shooting, Mallery said.

Mallery said other partygoers told officers the shooter fled in a vehicle. Officers were able to track down the suspect and attempted to stop him near Farmview Drive and US-42, but the suspect fled again. A chase ensued. Finally, the suspect drove off the road into a ditch on Dale Heimbrock Way near Hicks Pike. The officers located the suspect with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gun shot wound. He was transported to St. Elizabeth Hospital, where he died. Authorities don’t believe Garvey was invited to the party, but he was known by other partygoers, Mallery said.

The suspect has since been identified as 21-year-old Chase Garvey, who was a convicted felon from a previous sex offense, but Mallery said they don’t believe that is connected to the shooting. Records from the courts and the Department of Corrections indicate that Garvey was on probation for a felony charge of unlawfully transacting with a minor in 2021. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but the sentence was suspended in favor of probation on the condition he didn’t interact with the victim, didn’t commit any more crimes, engage in psychological counseling and maintain employment. He was scheduled to come off of probation in 2027.?

Mallery said Garvey’s motive is still under investigation.

“We have never dealt with this before,” Mallery said. “I know it’s gone on throughout the nation, but this is the first time that we’ve had a mass shooting in Florence.”

The Florence Police Department is asking anyone who has any information related to this event to call them at (859)371-1234.

This is a developing story and LINK nky will report more on it as information becomes available.?

WCPO’s Sean DeLancey, Molly Schramm, Krizia Williams & Michael Coker contributed reporting to this story.

This story is republished from LINK nky.

An FBI Evidence Response Team investigator walks behind a crime scene. The FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report, which was released in early June, suggests that violent crime dropped by 15% compared with the first quarter of 2023. (Ann Arbor Miller/Associated Press)

Violent crime in the United States dropped significantly in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period last year, according to the FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report released last month.

The FBI’s data, collected from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies representing about 77% of the country’s population, suggests violent crime dropped by 15% compared with the first quarter of 2023.

The data, which covers reported crimes from January to March, shows a 26.4% decrease in murders, a 25.7% decrease in rapes, a 17.8% decrease in robberies, and a 12.5% decrease in aggravated assaults. Reported property crime also fell by 15.1%.

Nevertheless, the widespread public perception that crime is rising — a perception reinforced by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many other GOP candidates — could figure prominently in November’s election. And state legislative and gubernatorial candidates from both parties likely also will cite crime statistics on the stump.

In a Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described the crime problem in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious. This is the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.

In May, Trump wrongly called FBI data showing a decline in crime “fake numbers.” This month, he erroneously claimed that the FBI’s crime statistics exclude 30% of cities, including the “biggest and most violent.”

He could have been referring to the fact some departments couldn’t report data in 2021 because the FBI switched data reporting systems, but experts say the overall numbers remain valid.

President Joe Biden has also used crime statistics for political gain. In a May campaign email, Biden said that Trump “oversaw the largest increase in murder in U.S. history.” While this is not entirely inaccurate — the country did see the largest one-year increase in murders in 2020 — it omits context regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

Beshear vetoes sweeping anti-crime bill along with parts of state budget

The latest FBI crime statistics align with other early data from 2024. In May, the Major Cities Chiefs Association released first-quarter data from a survey of 68 major metropolitan police departments showing a 17% drop in murders compared with the same period last year.

The FBI’s latest data is preliminary and unaudited, which means it will change as more law enforcement agencies refine their numbers throughout the year. National crime data is incomplete, as it only includes crimes reported to police, and not every law enforcement agency participates in the FBI’s crime reporting program.

Despite the data’s limitations, some criminologists and crime data experts say the data is reliable. Some say the FBI’s data likely overstates the decreases, suggesting the drop in violent crime is likely less dramatic but still trending downward.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data, so it matches but probably overstates what the trends are,” Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm that specializes in crime data, told Stateline in an interview. “In theory, everything will get more accurate as the year goes on.”

Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some criminologists caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“It looks good for the nation as a whole, but even with these great reductions, there are cities in the United States that have likely experienced increases that bucked the trend,” Charis Kubrin, a criminology, law and society professor at the University of California, Irvine, told Stateline.

The average American’s understanding of crime and crime statistics is heavily skewed by media coverage that focuses largely on when crimes are committed and by misleading political rhetoric, according to criminologists and crime data experts.

Instead of relying on statistics, which can feel impersonal, people tend to cling to anecdotes that resonate more emotionally. Politicians take advantage of this, Dan Gardner, author of the book “Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear,” told Stateline.

“If you are a political operative, capitalizing on fear of crime is incredibly easy to do,” Gardner said.

Telling a tragic story and framing it in a way so that voters feel they or their families could become victims of similar crimes unless they vote for a specific politician is a common, highly effective tactic, he added.

This use of fear as a motivator can drive people to the polls, Gardner said, but it also distorts public perception of crime.

“It’s a lousy way to understand the reality of personal safety and society, but it’s a very compelling form of marketing,” Gardner said.

The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, released a report this month urging police and the federal government to provide more timely crime data. The report emphasizes that crime data, especially national data, often lags up to a year, which hampers public understanding of crime trends and limits officials’ ability to make informed policy decisions to proactively address public safety issues.

“We need to accelerate improvements in our [crime] data,” John Roman, a senior fellow and the director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at NORC at the University of Chicago, told Stateline. Roman also is the chair of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Crime Trends Working Group. “The democratization of this data is really critical to more effective policy and programming.”

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and?part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network. ?Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

What is known about intimate partner violence in Kentucky isn’t the whole picture; research suggests only around 54% of of domestic violence incidents like rape or assault are reported to police.?(Getty Images)

If you or someone you know has experienced domestic violence, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.?

You can also contact any of Kentucky’s 15 domestic violence programs.?

Over a seven-month period last year, there were nearly 27,000 alleged cases of child abuse with a domestic violence component in Kentucky, the 2023 Domestic Violence Data Report shows.?

From April 22 to Dec. 31, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and help hotlines received 26,582 “unique reports” of child abuse “in which there were also allegations of domestic violence,” according to the statewide report, released Monday.??

Cortney Downs, chief equity officer for Kentucky Youth Advocates, said this number is “pretty alarming.”

“Those are real people, and … this is a significant part of their life, day in and day out,” Downs told the Lantern. “Parents, the non-offending caregivers, are having to think every day about how to keep their kids safe in a very different way than a lot of other parents. You have older siblings who are having to think about how to keep their younger siblings safe in a very different way than a lot of other people.”???

The report also shows the number of adult Kentuckians who experienced intimate partner violence decreased slightly in 2023 from 2022.?

In 2022, the first of its kind report showed about half of Kentucky women — 45.3% — and around 35.5% of men experienced intimate partner violence — or threat of it — in their lifetimes.

The 2023 report shows that from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, that number decreased to 44.5% of women and 32.9% of men.?

This includes, according to the report, “being fearful or concerned for safety, any post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, injury, need for medical care, housing services, victim advocate services, and/or legal services, missing at least one day of work or school, and/or contacting a crisis hotline.”?

The state began gathering this data in compliance with a 2022 Republican bill that directed agencies to annually gather and publish data on domestic and dating violence and abuse.?

Data in it comes from the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet’s Criminal Justice Statistical Analysis Center, Kentucky State Police, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and the Administrative Office of the Courts.

By the numbers?

The report shows that in Kentucky last year:?

• 41,887 electronic JC-3 forms (documenting alleged violence) were filed. This is up from 2022, when there were 38,708 electronic JC-3 forms filed across Kentucky.?
• 7,744 arrests were made for incidents involving domestic or dating violence and abuse. This is down from 2022, when there were 8,867 arrests. The decrease is because the report excluded human trafficking this year, according to the Justice & Public Safety Cabinet, “to help provide the state a better snapshot for progress to be made.”?
• 17,036 emergency protective orders were served by the Kentucky State Police.? This is an increase from 2022, when police served 16,402 emergency protective orders (EPOs), which are short-term restrictions on? the accused’s movements until the issue can go before a judge, which the court system aims to do within two weeks.?
• 15,104 individuals received services from ZeroV’s 15 regional domestic violence programs.
• 23,381 crisis/hotline calls were received through ZeroV’s 15 regional domestic violence programs. This is an increase from the 21,241 crisis calls in 2022.

‘Scary’ to report

What is known about intimate partner violence in Kentucky isn’t the whole picture; research suggests only around 54% of domestic violence incidents like rape or assault are reported to police.?

“The true prevalence and impact of domestic violence goes far beyond the scope of the data captured within this report,” the report says.?

The data that is known “is almost like the tip of the iceberg,” said Downs. “There are probably a lot more people — hundreds, thousands, potentially, of other people — across the state who are experiencing this currently, have experienced intimate partner violence at some point in their lives, and just didn’t say anything.”?

And any amount of interpersonal violence is too much, advocates say.?

Angela Yannelli, the CEO of ZeroV (formerly known as the Kentucky Coalition Against Domestic Violence), said “any level of violence greater than zero is a concern that deserves the attention of our commonwealth.”?

Ending such violence needs a comprehensive approach, she said.?

“We need a strong support system that makes sure everyone can access food, healthcare and housing, which would make it easier for survivors to get away from abusive relationships,” Yannelli said in a statement. “And finally, we need to abolish the cultural norms that allow for and perpetuate (intimate partner violence) to prevent it from happening in the first place.”

Community members — and lawmakers — need to band together to end cycles of violence and the stigma around reporting it, Downs with KYA said.?

“In general, I think it is very hard, it’s very scary, it’s very dangerous to even report at all, to tell anyone about what’s going on,” she said.?

Solutions to ending violence will be different in different areas of the state, Downs said. ?“It’s 2024. This isn’t a new or emerging issue, and so reading this report, to me, felt like an urgent call for action.”?

Lawmakers should work to find solutions to ending violence, she said, and listen to input from the experts in different regions.

“We all know somebody or multiple people who have gone through it. Non-offending parents and their children really cannot afford to have those in positions of power spending another year being just horrified or shocked by the data and then not following through with action.”?

Louisville Metro Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel has resigned. (Louisville Metro Police Department)

Louisville Metro Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel has resigned after being placed on administrative leave amid an investigation of her handling of sexual harassment allegations within the department.?

Mayor Craig Greenberg announced Tuesday that the chief’s resignation was effective immediately. He appointed Acting Chief of Police Paul Humphrey, who had been leading the department while Gwinn-Villaroel was on leave, to serve as the interim chief.?

In a statement, Greenberg said Humphrey “is fully empowered to make the decisions necessary to reduce gun violence, improve public safety, manage the department, take disciplinary action and implement the policy and priority changes we agree are necessary, particularly surrounding sexual harassment and police misconduct.”?

The mayor also thanked Gwinn-Villaroel for her service.?

“The people of Louisville expect all of us in public service to work together with integrity to make our city safer, stronger and healthier, and I am confident Interim Chief Humphrey and his team at LMPD will do that,” Greenberg said.?

Gwinn-Villaroel was suspended less than two weeks ago as a harassment allegation became public. While she was not involved in the alleged conduct, an attorney representing the initial accuser Maj. Shannon Lauder said the chief became aware of her complaint against Maj. Brian Kuriger during a command staff meeting.?

In the days following, Sgt. Lauren Carby filed a lawsuit against LMPD and alleged sexual harassment from Lauder and her husband, Lt. Jeff Lauder. Another lawsuit was filed by officer Christine Silk, who accused officers Justin LeMon and Dale Cottongim of sexually harassing her multiple times.?

Greenberg and Humphrey said immediate changes would be made to LMPD’s sexual harassment policies and procedures to more clearly define sexual harassment, improve and expand the reporting process, implement new training and add support systems for employees who report sexual harassment.?

Greenberg said it was “the beginning of what I expect to be major improvements and transformative reforms at LMPD” and more announcements will follow.??

“Let me be abundantly clear: LMPD will not tolerate sexual harassment. We are implementing significant policy updates. We have begun enhanced training and are revising and improving our reporting and handling processes,” Humphrey said. “Additionally, a variety of support systems are available for employee wellness including through our Summit Wellness Center. We are committed to accountability and fostering a safe work environment that is welcoming where all employees feel comfortable and secure.”

Gwinn-Villaroel became the permanent chief in 2023 after serving as interim chief of the department. LMPD has had six different leaders since 2020.?

In that time frame, the department has gained national criticism for various incidents, including the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, while officers were serving a no-knock warrant and, more recently, arresting professional golfer Scottie Scheffler during the PGA Championship but the charges have been dismissed.?

The City of Louisville earlier this year began negotiating a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to correct civil rights violations by the LMPD.

Gwinn-Villaroel joined the department in 2021 as deputy chief. She previously worked at the Atlanta Police Department.?

The campus of the University of Kentucky, where trustees are set to give final consideration to controversial internal governance changes on Friday. (Photo by Mark Cornelison | UK Photo)

The University of Kentucky on Thursday will conduct a “full-scale active aggressor crisis exercise” from 8 a.m. until the afternoon.?

“If you see large numbers of emergency response teams on campus, including police, fire and EMS, do not be alarmed,” says a UK release, “this is only a drill.”

The training provides an opportunity for first responders to run drills they cannot run while classes are in session at the Lexington campus, says the release. The UK Police Department will be working with personnel from UK HealthCare, UK Public Relations and the UK Emergency Operations Center to practice coordinating a response with internal and external stakeholders in the event of an active aggressor situation. Local and state law enforcement will participate as well.

This drill is taking place in partnership with Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service, which specializes in emergency management and preparedness training.

Kentucky House District 67 candidate Brian Ormes admitted to an altercation with a group of juveniles before his arrest inside a Fort Wright Walmart on Monday, according to a police report on the incident.

Ormes, 53, of Southgate has been charged with strangulation first degree, menacing and assault fourth degree stemming from the incident involving a 17-year-old male alleged victim inside the Valley Plaza store around 9 p.m., Fort Wright Police Chief Edward Butler reported Tuesday. The name of the alleged victim has not been released to the media.

A police press release said Ormes “admitted to being in an altercation with the juveniles because of their unruly behavior in the store which he indicated impacted the safety of his child.”

Ormes posted bond Tuesday. He is scheduled to appear in Kenton County District Court on April 16.

According to the official police report on the incident, a group of juveniles inside the store were playing with a ball that almost hit Ormes’ child. Witnesses to the incident allege Ormes became angry and followed the juveniles, putting his hand on the 17-year-old male.

Store video of the incident given to police shows Ormes placing his hands in the area of the alleged victim’s neck, the police report says.

The alleged victim told police he was “unable to breath for a second but never passed out or felt lightheaded” during the incident, according to the police report.

An employee who said she saw the incident told police she saw Ormes put his hand around the teen’s neck.

Ormes is running against Bellevue businessman Terry Hatton in the May 21 Republican primary to replace retiring Rep. Rachel Roberts (D-Newport). The winner of the May 21 election will face Democrat Matt Lehman of Newport in the Nov. 5 general election.

According to reports from LINK’s media partner WCPO, Hatton called for Ormes to drop out of the race on Tuesday.

“He should consider dropping out of the race,” he said. “His actions last night, obviously, he has some personal issues that he needs to address before he can serve the public.”

The Campbell County Republican Party said it is aware of reports of an alleged incident involving Ormes “but do not know any of the details surrounding it, so we have no comment at this time.”

“However, we do firmly support Mr. Ormes’, and every American citizen’s, Constitutional right to due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law,” the statement says.

The group noted that it does not support or endorse any candidate in a contested primary race, and would back whichever candidate wins the primary.

“We trust the judgment of the Republican voters here in Campbell County and will support the candidates that they select on May 21st,” the statement reads.

Campbell County Democratic Party Chair Melissa Whalen called the situation “sad.”

“I don’t know how we devolved to this point,” she said.

Whalen said the arrest and Republican response was indicative of larger issues within American politics.

“Obviously, none of us are perfect,” she said, “but there’s a bottom line you should be able to cross.”

Democrat Lehman declined an interview and further comment writing, “Generally, I believe our elected representatives should respect their constituents and serve as responsible community leaders. This is what I intend to do if elected to represent Northern Campbell County in Frankfort.”

Court documents show Ormes posted bond on Tuesday. He has a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 16.

LINK nky reached out to Ormes for comment but has not received a response.

This story is republished from LINK nky. LINK’s media partner WCPO contributed to this report.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has called on Blair to resign. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky’s Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday heard a slew of testimony from across the political spectrum opposing an omnibus crime bill.?

Senate Judicial Committee Chair Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, said that while House Bill 5 was up only for discussion Tuesday, he expects a committee vote on the legislation Thursday.

The bill currently has competing substitute versions in the committee — one from Westerfield and another from Sen. John Schickel, R-Union. The House sponsors of the bill expressed support for Schickel’s version.?

Advocates from both liberal and conservative think tanks spoke against the bill Tuesday, but several more had signed up. Because Rep. Jared Bauman, the bill’s primary sponsor, had to leave because of another obligation, Westerfield ended the meeting before everyone who had signed up got to speak.

The meeting lasted almost two hours. More discussion may be held ahead of the Thursday vote.?

Pam Thomas, a senior fellow for the progressive Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said the organization was concerned by the lack of information about the bill’s fiscal impacts on the state. The center’s analysis found that House Bill 5 would cost more than $1 billion over the next decade because of an increase in incarceration expenses.?

“This is a system that cannot handle the influx of new people if House Bill 5 passes,” Thomas said.?

Sarah Durand, the vice president for government affairs of center-right group KY FREE, said the Legislative Research Commission should conduct an in-depth fiscal analysis of the bill before the General Assembly passes it. Ten days are left in the 60-day legislative session.?

“There are too many provisions of House Bill 5 to cover,” she said. “Please know that many will significantly increase the burden borne by taxpayers to support the state’s corrections system.”

Joey Comley, the Kentucky director of conservative group Right on Crime, said the legislation is not based on any research in Kentucky. Additionally, he argued that while the bill has tough consequences for crimes, “consequences alone will not solve Kentucky’s criminal problems.”?

“I would submit that any comprehensive criminal justice overhaul like House Bill 5 requires Kentucky data coupled with multidisciplinary deliberation and the exercise of this General Assembly’s resolute discernment.”?

Among the several questions raised by lawmakers during the meeting, Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, pressed Bauman and his co-sponsors about the data behind the bill. A recent Kentucky Public Radio story found that Bauman’s source list appeared to be copied and pasted from a 2023 paper arguing for solutions to crime in Atlanta.?

“Well, I’ll ask a very direct question,” Neal said to the sponsors. “I said you have data that you base this upon, and will you provide it before — sufficient time — before we take action on this Thursday?”

Republican House Whip Jason Nemes, of Middletown, responded that the data also includes “conversations with a lot of experts, a lot of circuit judges, a lot of commonwealth’s attorneys.”?

Bauman said he would share the names with Neal.

The committee substitutes

The bulk of the meeting focused on differences between the committee substitute versions of the bill from Westerfield and Schickel. The committee did not adopt either yet.?

However, after the meeting, Westerfield said on X, formerly Twitter, that he appreciated Bauman for taking questions on the bill but he was “deeply disappointed that the support doesn’t appear to be there for my proposed sub.” Westerfield asked Schickel to include some of his requests in his version of the bill.?

Bauman asked the committee to support Shickel’s version at the beginning of the committee. Later, Westerfield noted at the end of the bill sponsors’ presentation that their prepared PowerPoint slides only referenced Schickel’s substitute.?

Westerfield, a former prosecutor, publicly shared a draft of a committee substitute version he worked on ahead of the meeting. Most of his changes would lean to more restorative justice approaches. He said online that his version “doesn’t make half the changes I’d like to make, but it does improve” the bill.?

His version would create a “Recidivism Reduction Task Force,” which would be made up of governor appointees, a district judge appointed by the Kentucky Supreme Court chief justice and more members representing education, law enforcement, community-based organizations and communities affected by crime or people with personal experience in the criminal justice system.?

Westerfield’s version also calls for those found violating the bill’s ban on street camping be referred to mental health or homelessness assistance resources. Another change would be that the family of a homicide victim could request firearms used in the homicide be destroyed, rather than be destroyed after auction.?

Schickel, a retired law enforcement officer, said the “meat and potatoes” of his version are the ban on street camping, the three felony strikes rule for repeat offenders and fleeing and evading police.?

“Without our police being respected, they cannot police our communities.”

Some advocates expressed a preference for Westerfield’s version. Phillip Lawson, the legislative agent for the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told the committee that Westerfield’s substitute “contains significant and material changes that address our concerns,” especially for Kentucky’s violent offender statute.?

Lyndon Pryor, president of the Louisville Urban League, told the Kentucky Lantern ahead of the meeting that Westerfield’s changes do “improve the bill,” but the best outcome would be to shelve the bill entirely. The legislation does not have solutions to improve the challenges it is supposed to overcome, he said.?

“Even with the changes, it’s not necessarily going to be anything that we can get behind, but I can acknowledge that the changes, at least that I’ve seen, do seem to at least make the original bill less harsh in a few ways,” Pryor said.?

The House gave its approval to the bill in a vote of 74-22 in January. It has yet to receive a reading in the Senate.?

Naloxone (Narcan) nasal spray can reverse the effects of opioid overdoses. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Boone County is set to hire three new workers aimed at addressing the multifaceted challenges posed by the opioid crisis.

On Tuesday, the Boone County Fiscal Court approved a resolution allowing the use of opioid abatement funds to hire up to three police navigators/social workers — a newly created position.

“This is one of the greatest uses of the dollars, overall I would say,” Boone County Judge/Executive Gary Moore said. “The program has tremendous potential in many ways.”

The money comes from a $26 billion settlement between multiple states and some of the United States’ largest pharmaceutical corporations, specifically, drug distributors — McKesson Corp., AmeriSourceBergen and Cardinal Health — and manufacturer Johnson & Johnson. Kentucky received $478 million from the settlement; half of the money was distributed to the state, while the other half went to local government.

Boone County is set to receive an estimated $4.6 million distributed in yearly allotments until 2038, according to a database published by the Kentucky Association of Counties.

To decide how to use the funds, Boone County Administrator Matthew Webster said that throughout 2022 and 2023, county staff consulted with community stakeholders impacted by the opioid epidemic, such as the sheriff’s department, drug court, and the cities of Florence, Walton and Union, among others.

Ultimately, the county created a new position under the sheriff’s department. Laura Pleiman, thedirector of Community Services and Programs for the fiscal court, worked with the sheriff’s department and other community agencies to craft a job description, protocols and plans for the new police navigator/social worker position. The position will be housed under the sheriff’s department.

Webster said the position would provide, “relief to frontline deputies while addressing non-law enforcement issues that currently require the time and attention of sworn officers with a particular emphasis on opioid use and its tangential impacts.”

Moore explained that the workers are there “when law enforcement has stabilized a situation,” but there still needs to be someone present to engage with family members or other present individuals.

The county plans to wait to hire the three staffers; instead, it will hire two in the coming months to adequately develop the program. The position would pay around $78,000 annually, Webster said.

Other police departments in Northern Kentucky already have similar staff positions. Pleiman said the county worked closely with the Alexandria Police Department social workers to develop the position.

“I would say probably that Northern Kentucky is leading the way a lot in this area,” Pleiman said.

This story is republished from LINK nky.

Politicians on both sides of the debate often connect bail policy to crime rates. But experts say doing so is problematic, because so much of the crime data that states and cities use is unreliable. (Photo by Andy Sacks/Getty Images)

Crime is shaping up as a potent election issue, and one of the key points of debate is over bail: Which suspects should be jailed before trial, and which ones should be released on bond — and for how much money?

Some conservatives argue that lenient bail policies put suspects who are likely to commit crimes before their upcoming court hearings, or who might skip bail altogether, back on the street. But some progressives?say research does not support that contention. They?argue that detaining defendants because they can’t afford financial bonds is unfair, and note that such defendants are disproportionately Black, Latino and low income.

Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico have moved away from the use of money bonds. But other states, such as Georgia, Kentucky and New York, are moving in the opposite direction, implementing stricter rules. Tennessee is considering a constitutional amendment that would give judges more discretion to deny bail amid concerns about rising crime rates. The Kentucky House recently passed HB 5, a sweeping crime bill that restricts charitable bail organizations from posting $5,000 or more in bail. It now moves to the Senate.

Politicians on both sides of the debate often connect bail policy to crime rates. But experts say?doing so is problematic, because so much of the crime data that states and cities use is unreliable.

The reality, experts say, is that most crime data is too unreliable to pinpoint specific policies as the sole cause of increasing or decreasing crime rates. The bail system also is oftentimes misunderstood as a form of punishment rather than the process for releasing individuals before trial under certain conditions.

“There’s nothing out there that shows a correlation or a connection of any sort between increasing the rates of pretrial release and the rates of crime,” said Spurgeon Kennedy, vice president of the Crime and Justice Institute, a nonprofit criminal justice research organization. Kennedy previously served as president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.

These misconceptions about crime can leave voters vulnerable to misinformation ahead of local and national elections.

“If you ask the typical person on the streets, ‘Do you think crime is up or down over the last year,’ they will tell you, ‘Oh, it’s up. It’s way up.’ But we’ve seen reductions in crime overall and also in violent crime,” Kennedy said. “So the facts don’t follow the argument, and that’s unfortunate because that makes it much more easier to keep this out as a political football.”

Both chambers of Georgia’s legislature passed a bill this month that would add 30 additional felony and misdemeanor crimes to the state’s list of bail-restricted offenses, which means that people accused of those crimes would be required to post cash bail. They include charges of unlawful assembly, racketeering, domestic terrorism and possession of marijuana.

The bill also would prevent any?individuals?or?organizations?from posting cash bail more than three times per year unless they establish themselves as bail bonding companies, severely limiting charitable bail funds. The bill is now headed to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.

Some criminal justice advocates say the bill, if enacted, would clash with changes made by a 2018 law to the state’s legal system for people accused of misdemeanors. That law, which was championed by former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, mandates that judges take into account the financial circumstances of the accused when setting bail.

Proponents of the new bill, which was first introduced last year, argue that the measure is necessary to deter crime, support victims of crimes and hold repeat offenders accountable. State Sen. Randy Robertson, who sponsored the bill, said it focuses on people accused of violent crimes.

“What we’re focusing on is trying to get the nonviolent individuals back out into the workforce and back to their families,” Robertson said in an interview. Robertson, a Republican, argued that the bill would also lead to a “dramatic decrease” in the state’s jail population because it offers a pathway for organizations, such as churches and nonprofits, to set themselves up as bail bonding companies.

Those organizations would have to meet the same legal requirements as bond companies, including undergoing background checks, paying fees, and having an application approved by a local sheriff’s department.

Some opponents, though, argue that it would lead to overcrowding of jails and disproportionately harm low-income and Black and Hispanic communities. The ACLU of Georgia has threatened to sue the state if the bill is signed into law, arguing that it’s unconstitutional.

Robertson said that some of the criticisms raised are “rehash complaints” he has heard for the past 25 or 30 years.

“There has been no evidence, independent research that shows placing low bails, allowing judges to set bails at whatever they choose to, keeps a disproportionate amount of individuals held in our jails,” Robertson said. “I don’t think that [this bill] touches the third rail of constitutionality at all.”

Pretrial data and research

Several research studies, though, suggest that setting money bail isn’t effective in ensuring court appearances or improving public safety.

Pretrial policy experts say that?being in jail for even a few days or weeks can cost people their homes or jobs or damage their personal relationships, said Matt Alsdorf, an associate director with the Center for Effective Public Policy and the co-director of the group’s Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research project.

“The use of unnecessary detention has negative impacts, even if you’re just looking at it through a public safety or crime prevention lens,” he said.

Pretrial recidivism has long been studied by criminal justice experts: A 2013 study of more than 150,000 people who were jailed in Kentucky found that longer detention periods increased the likelihood that people would be rearrested both during the pretrial period and within the first two years following the closure of their case. The study also found that people who were held for two or three days had a 9% greater likelihood of failing to appear in court than people who were held for one day.

Furthermore, a study published in the Criminology & Public Policy journal last year found that Black defendants were 34% more likely than white defendants to be recommended to be held behind bars until their cases were resolved.

“The money bond system is a very regressive system that effectively ends up acting as a means of incarcerating populations that are typically already disadvantaged,” Alsdorf said.

In places that have relaxed their bail practices, audits show that pretrial jail populations usually drop following the changes. In some jurisdictions, there also are fewer arrests for certain types of offenses.

In Houston, a lawsuit claiming misdemeanor bail practices in Harris County were unconstitutional led to a settlement and consent decree in 2019. The county is required to release most people charged with misdemeanors on a personal bond, meaning defendants simply promise to attend their next court date.

In the latest independent monitoring report on the system, from 2023, observers wrote that the changes “have saved Harris County and residents many millions of dollars, improved the lives of tens of thousands of persons,” and resulted in “no increase in new offenses by persons arrested for misdemeanors.”

Brandon Garrett, the lead monitor and a Duke University School of Law professor, said in an interview that racial disparities “vanished overnight” after bail practices were relaxed. The monitors have also found an overall decline of about 8% in misdemeanor arrests between 2019 and 2022.

“There were real concerns about the racial disparities of the old cash bail system, and it was pretty remarkable just how quickly those disparities — in terms of who ended up in jail and who didn’t — vanished,” Garrett said.

‘Intentional and deliberate’

In 2017, New Jersey moved away from the use of cash bail in favor of the Public Safety Assessment, an algorithm tool that uses nine factors from an individual’s criminal history to predict their likelihood of returning to court for future hearings and remaining crime-free while on pretrial release.

The changes encouraged more “intentional and deliberate” detention hearings, recalled now-retired trial court Judge Martin Cronin, who sat on the committee that unanimously recommended the switch to a more risk-based bail system.

Cronin, now a consultant with Pretrial Justice Solutions, LLC, said the state’s new system offers more accountability and transparency.

“You’re focused on what are the permissible reasons for detention and how does the record tie into that, individualized to that defendant who’s in front of you,” Cronin told Stateline. “There is real accountability there. … It’s a fundamentally different process.”

Between 2015 and 2023, New Jersey’s pretrial jail population decreased by 27.2%, according to the state judiciary’s Criminal Justice Reform Statistics report last year.

Stateline is a sister newsroom to the Kentucky Lantern in the States Newsroom network and as a nonprofit is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected].?

VOCAL-KY representatives Shameka Parrish-Wright, left, and Stephanie Johnson speak against House Bill 5. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — Lawmakers moved a Republican anti-crime bill out of committee Thursday afternoon after hearing more than two hours of testimony, including support from crime victims and warnings from opponents that the measure “criminalizes poverty” and will drive up Kentucky’s already high rate of incarceration.

The committee adopted a substitute version of House Bill 5 that was not available online Thursday evening, but has since been published.?Rep. Jared Bauman, R-Louisville, the bill’s primary sponsor, said changes made in the substitute version include removing sections related to changes in the parole board, removing language that would affect federal funding for housing initiatives and giving schools more flexibility in reporting to law enforcement.

A priority for Republicans and dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act,” the measure includes a three strikes law for violent felonies; provisions against street camping near businesses, homes or other public spaces; and a felony carjacking statute. A goal of the bill’s sponsors is to strengthen penalties for criminal acts.?

The House Judiciary committee approved the bill 13-5. Republican Reps. Savannah Maddox, of Dry Ridge, and Steven Doan, of Erlanger, joined Democrats in voting no. Doan said he needed to see further changes to the bill before he could support it. Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser, R-Taylor Mill, passed on voting because she too wanted changes.

“With this bill, House Bill 5, we are reasserting some basic and simple truths,” said Bauman. “And that is that criminals, not society, are accountable for their actions. And society has the right to protect itself from the criminal element. And so, that criminal element has become an all too normal part of our world today.”?

Bauman and other Louisville Republicans backing the bill brought family members of deceased crime victims to testify before the committee. Rachel Conley, the widow of Scott County Sheriff Deputy Caleb Conley, recounted the day her husband died in May 2023 after he was shot during a traffic stop. Authorities have said the man accused was connected to other crimes.?

“My story is just one of many. There are far too many stories that are just like mine,” Rachel told the committee. “Our first responders are not just a badge. They are human beings with family and friends who love them. Many of them have spouses and children that worry about them making it home after each shift. I tell my story because I hope it has an impact on your decision.”

The Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police had previously expressed support for the bill. Ryan Straw, vice president and governmental affairs chair of the police union, told the committee the bill is “vital to the health and welfare of our law enforcement officers and to the safety of the communities they serve.”?

Ahead of Thursday’s committee meeting, critics of the bill had already been vocal in their opposition, arguing that it would increase incarcerations instead of addressing issues that increase crime. Several speakers renewed that call during Thursday’s meeting.?

VOCAL-KY Director Shameka Parrish-Wright said lawmakers should focus on legislation for “real actions that help improve conditions” for those in poverty across the state. Parrish-Wright is also a member of the Louisville Metro Council. VOCAL-KY is a community organizing group that aims to build power among low-income people.?

“The fact is Kentucky is poor,” she said. “And Kentucky is criminalizing poverty and we will not get better that way.”

Kungu Njuguna, policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, told the committee he agrees with the sponsors’ goal — “a safe, healthy, vibrant and prosperous commonwealth” — he just disagrees with how they are going about it. He noted Kentucky’s high incarceration rate and added that “means if locking people up made us safe, we’re one of the safest places on the planet.”?

Kentucky has the world’s seventh-highest rate of incarceration, according to data analyzed by the Prison Policy Initiative in 2021. Kentucky incarcerates 930 people per 100,000 population, higher than the rate in the United Sates as a whole of 664 incarcerated per 100,000 people. The study includes state and federal prisons and local jails.?

“But yet, here we sit with a bill entitled ‘The Safer Kentucky Act,’” Njuguna said, “looking to lock up more people for longer with little to no support for provisions — maybe one or two — that uplift and empower people, like funding for affordable housing, substance use treatment, mental health, victim services.”

Ten GOP members of the committee are co-sponsors of the bill, which has more than 50 Republicans as co-sponsors.?

Recent Kentucky crime data shows the state had a decrease of 17.9% in homicides between 2021 and 2022. (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images)

Critics of an omnibus anti-crime bill filed by Louisville GOP lawmakers said on Tuesday the state should instead make investments to help keep Kentuckians out of jail — not send more of them to prison.?

House Bill 5, dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act” by sponsors, is a priority piece of Republican legislation that has undergone several changes since it was first publicly discussed in a September press conference. It includes a three strikes law for violent felonies; measures to prevent street camping near businesses, homes or other public spaces; and a felony carjacking statute.?

The bill, which has about 45 Republican co-sponsors, including Majority Whip Rep. Jason Nemes of Middletown, generated opposition even before it was officially filed in the House last week.?

On Tuesday, a collection of Kentucky groups such as the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, the Coalition for the Homeless, the Louisville Urban League, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, Kentucky Council of Churches and more held a press conference criticizing the legislation.

Felicia Nu’Man, the director of policy for the Louisville Urban League and a former assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney in Jefferson County, said during the press conference there are “many bad policy positions” in the legislation. She added that carjacking is currently covered under an existing felony charge and argued that the “increasing of punishments and the reclassification of crimes is unnecessary.”?

“We cannot continue to incarcerate everyone. It is a purely remote emotional response,” Nu’Man said. “We should only incarcerate people for long periods of time when we are terrified of the violent acts they might commit — not because we are angry that they’re making our lives inconvenient and have a mental health problem like addiction.”?

The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, which is a progressive think tank, found in 2022 that Kentucky jails were over capacity, with 21,831 people incarcerated in jails at the end of April, along with an additional 9,835 people incarcerated in state prisons. Recent Kentucky crime data shows the state had a decrease of 17.9% in homicides between 2021 and 2022, though initially reported inaccurately by Kentucky State Police.?

After filing the bill last week, the primary sponsor Rep. Jared Bauman, of Louisville, told reporters more co-sponsors are expected to join the legislation in upcoming weeks.?

“The first duty of any civilized society is to protect its honest citizens from those that prey on their innocent fellow citizens,” he said. “Crime is something that directly impacts every single Kentuckian and it is with a deep sense of purpose and value that we put forward the critical reforms in the Safer Kentucky Act.”?

The Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police plans to testify in favor of the legislation when it has a committee hearing. The organization expressed support for the bill, saying in a statement that it “not only addresses many of the issues we are seeing each day but gives us hope that violent offenders or those who poison our communities with drugs will have to answer for their crimes with real consequences.”?

However, Kungu Njuguna, policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, told reporters last week that the bill is not focused on “what really makes Kentucky safe.” He pointed out Kentucky’s high incarceration rate and said the General Assembly should focus on investments to help Kentuckians dealing with substance abuse disorders, mental health, lack of affordable housing and more instead of increasing criminal penalties and creating new crimes. During this session, the General Assembly will decide the state budget for the next two years.?

“We already have sufficient laws on the books,” Njuguna said. “In fact, we have a law known as the persistent felony offender statute, where people are already subject to enhanced penalties upon the second felony. So again, we need to focus on things that keep people out of the criminal legal system and not create new laws.”?

Bauman’s bill is getting national attention. The Bail Project, a national nonprofit that assists low-income people with bail and pretrial support, said in a statement that it opposes the bill because “it doubles-down on policies fueling mass incarceration, which will only harm the poorest and most vulnerable Kentuckians.” The bill includes several new regulations for bail organizations, including preventing charitable bail organizations from giving bail in amounts of more than $5,000.?

The Bail Project said the regulations “will only harm the most disadvantaged and already vulnerable Kentuckians in the state.”?

“Cash bail creates a two-tiered system of justice that benefits the rich and disadvantages those without money, upending the fundamental principle in our justice system that everyone is innocent until proven guilty,” the nonprofit said. “It’s for these reasons that charitable bail organizations are so crucial — they even the playing field by restoring the presumption of innocence and ensuring that everyone gets their fair shake during trial. Kentuckians broadly agree that our criminal justice system is in need of reform — the Safer Kentucky Act will not achieve that.”?

When asked if he anticipates any challenges in passing the bill, Bauman said he welcomes them as the legislation moves forward and added he hopes they help “put forward the most effective policy for our state.”

“We do want it to be strong, we want to hold violent criminals accountable, and we want it to be very effective as well,” he said. “Everyone is welcomed with a seat at the table, so those conversations will continue.

A security guard, right, stands at the entrance to a Nordstrom department store in Los Angeles where a smash-and-grab robbery took place. At least 14 states have passed laws in the past two years to combat retail theft, but critics question the need for these laws and say the threat of organized shoplifting rings is overblown. (Photo by Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press)

Even before Virginia lawmakers passed a tough new law against organized retail crime earlier this year, Bradley Haywood, a public defender in Arlington, Virginia, challenged the rationale. The idea that retailers in the state had lost billions to organized theft was a myth manufactured by retailers themselves, Haywood argued.

Now the outspoken lawyer has fresh ammunition for his effort to repeal the law: The National Retail Federation earlier this month retracted its April assertion that nearly half of the $94.5 billion in merchandise that went missing in 2021 was stolen by retail rings.?The true percentage was only a small fraction of that amount, about 5%.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,?Virginia is one?of at least 14 states?that enacted retail theft laws over the past two years in response to reports of highly organized theft rings invading stores across the country and fleeing, collectively, with billions of dollars in merchandise.?Social media posts showing thieves storming retail outlets helped fuel the crackdown.

Nine states passed new laws this year, either toughening punishment or creating task forces to?study?the potential threats posed by organized theft rings.?At least one state — Texas — enacted two laws, one creating a task force and the other allowing potential thieves to avoid prosecution if they agree to an education course designed to steer them away from breaking the law.

In addition to Texas and Virginia, Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Oregon enacted retail theft laws this year. California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and North Carolina did so last year.

Over the past several years, retailers, prosecutors and police have pushed state and federal lawmakers to crack down on thieves who, they say, have become increasingly sophisticated and violent.?Some large retailers have shuttered stores with the largest losses. And shoppers at many stores have had to get used to asking clerks to open locked displays of merchandise vulnerable to theft. Some retailers have directed employees not to pursue shoplifters, out of fear for their safety.

Despite emerging questions over the extent of the losses, law enforcement officers and prosecutors insist the threat is greater than ever, citing a recent series of busts against sometimes violent shoplifting rings amid the Christmas shopping season.

“To me, it’s getting worse,” said James Kneipp, a Houston Police Department detective. Police in the nation’s fourth-largest city recently arrested 13 suspects for allegedly participating in an organized theft ring, he said. “They’re getting bigger. They’re getting … braver,” Kneipp told Stateline. The investigation is ongoing.

Republican state Sen. Aaron Freeman authored the law in Indiana, which makes the organized retail theft of firearms or at least $50,000 in merchandise a Level 5 felony, which carries a penalty of up to six years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. After the recent arrests of two suspects accused of stealing tools valued at thousands of dollars, Freeman publicly warned anyone thinking of following suit.

“This isn’t misdemeanor land anymore,” he told Indianapolis Fox 59.?“You’re going to play in felony world.”

A look at the numbers

The National Retail Federation, which describes itself as the world’s largest trade association, has been at the forefront of the lobbying campaign for tougher laws. In October, representatives from more than 30 retailers traveled to Washington, D.C., on a trip organized by the group to lobby for a major anti-theft bill in Congress.

But the organization’s campaign took a hit after it was forced to walk back its claim that nearly half of so-called inventory shrink in 2021 was attributable to organized retail crime. Shrink is an industry term to describe all inventory losses from multiple causes, including theft. The true number was?closer to 5%, or $4.7 billion. The trade publication?Retail Dive?first reported the error.

“Obviously, their account that they put out erroneous data hurts their credibility,” said Texas Democratic state Rep. Chris Turner, who authored the Lone Star State’s new law creating a 10-member task force headed by the state comptroller to examine the threat posed by organized retail theft.

“From my vantage point, if someone brought me data from that organization in the future, I’d want to double- and triple-check it.”

Mary McGinty, vice president of communications and public affairs for the National Retail Federation, said in statements to news outlets, including Stateline, that the organization was adjusting its figures after discovering the error, which she said was made by an analyst for K2 Integrity, an advisory group that assisted with the report.

According to the federation’s revised 2023 national retail security survey, McGinty said, overall shrink accounted for $112.1 billion in losses in 2022, up from $93.9 billion in 2021.?Internal and external theft of all kinds, “on par with previous years,” accounted for about two-thirds — or $73 billion — of retailers’ shrinkage, which she said can vary significantly from sector to sector.

Despite having to retract its initial estimate, retail federation officials?said the industry hasn’t changed its position that organized retail theft is more than “just shoplifting.”

“We stand behind the widely understood fact that organized retail crime is a serious problem impacting retailers of all sizes and communities across our nation,” said McGinty.

Other experts, however, say the extent of retail theft is yet to be determined.?“At this point, we just don’t have a strong grasp on the extent and changing nature of the shoplifting problem,” said Ernesto Lopez, research specialist for the Council on Criminal Justice,?which advocates for safety and equality in the U.S. criminal justice system.

“One reason for this is that we don’t know how many retailers are reporting theft incidents to police, and how often they are reporting them. We also don’t know how anti-theft measures taken by retailers may be affecting theft levels. Without all of that information, any portrait of shoplifting will be incomplete.”

Although videos of “smash-and-grab” rings storming department stores have ratcheted up concern about theft, a recent report by Lopez’s organization found that such incidents “are rare and account for a very small percentage of overall shoplifting,” said the analyst. More than 95% percent of shoplifting incidents are carried out by “one to two people,” he said.

Public officials respond

But many law enforcement officials, now armed with tougher state laws, continue to assert that?retail theft rings are often large and well-organized, made up of “boosters”?(shoplifters) and fences who peddle the stolen merchandise online or to other stores.

Fences also provide hotels and rent cars for boosters, who often hit several cities a day to procure stolen goods, according to investigators. Boosters often are given an online shopping list to illegally procure items such as power tools, over-the-counter medical items, cosmetics and toiletries.

In Florida, Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody and Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, a Democrat, recently announced the results of monthslong investigations that resulted in charges against 14?defendants in what Moody called a “massive” organized?theft ring that caused at least $20 million in losses to more than 20 different retailers, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowes.

Prosecutors and authorities also describe a menacing picture in?Alabama, which this year?enacted a law that allows law enforcement and prosecutors to cross jurisdictional lines to pursue bands of thieves who hit retailers in multiple cities.

“The main thing is it allows us to go and get the higher-ups … the real people who are profiting off this crime,” said Barry Matson, executive director of the Alabama District Attorneys Association, which pushed for the law. “We’ve had major national retailers close their doors in Alabama because theft was so high.”

Matson disparaged what he called “pro-criminal” advocates, including critics in the media and liberal-leaning social policy groups, who are pushing back against law enforcement’s portrayal of a national retail theft problem.?“I think there’s these groups that are more sympathetic to criminal defendants than?they are [to]?victims,” he told Stateline.

“We know it in the numbers. We see the images of the thieves, people going in and cleaning out stores. And it’s been at the expense of victims of crime, and I’m sick of it.”

But in Virginia, Haywood remains skeptical. He says he will fight to repeal his state’s law next year, though he acknowledges that it’s a long shot.

“The notion that, like, the mafia is going to get rich selling air freshener and deodorant … that just seems pretty ridiculous to me,” he said.

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication of the Kentucky Lantern and part of?States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and donors as a 501c(3) public charity.?

Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, center, speaks at a campaign event earlier this month in Tampa, Fla. DeSantis touts Florida’s low crime rate, but fewer than 1 in 10 law enforcement agencies in his state reported their crime statistics to the FBI in 2021. (John Raoux/The Associated Press)

When Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his presidential campaign in May, he proudly told the nation that Florida’s crime rate in 2021 had reached a 50-year low.

But really, DeSantis couldn’t say for sure.

That’s because fewer than 1 in 10 law enforcement agencies in his state had reported their crime statistics to the FBI. In fact, more than 40% of the Sunshine State’s population was unaccounted for in the data used by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in its 2021 statewide crime report.

In Wichita, Kansas, Democratic Mayor Brandon Whipple claimed in May that violent crime had decreased by half during his term. But Whipple’s source, the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, missed half the violent crimes recorded by the Wichita Police Department, possibly because the agency couldn’t mesh its system with the FBI’s recently revamped system.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies’ inability — or refusal — to send their annual crime data to the FBI has resulted in a distorted picture of the United States’ crime trends, according to a new Stateline analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data.

“We have policymakers making policy based on completely incomplete data. We have political elections being determined based on vibes rather than actual data. It’s a mess,” said Jeff Asher, a data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm.

Experts warn that some policymakers, knowingly or unknowingly, use those flawed statistics to tout promising crime trends — misleading voters. The inaccurate data also can affect efforts to improve public safety and criminal justice, potentially leading policymakers to miss the mark in addressing real community issues.

“The problem for voters is that they don’t have very good information about what levels of safety actually are,” said Anna Harvey, a politics, data science and law professor at New York University. Harvey also is the director of the university’s Public Safety Lab and the president of the Social Science Research Council.

“They’re a little bit vulnerable to politicians who are kind of throwing around allegations and claims about crime that may or may not be accurate,” she told Stateline.

DeSantis faced criticism for repeating the incomplete numbers, and NBC News this summer reported that law enforcement rank-and-file had warned that the statistics weren’t correct.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement defended the numbers to NBC News, saying, in part, that “criticism about FDLE’s robust data collection methods is unfounded.”

FBI’s switch to a new system

A year ago, when the FBI initially released its 2021 national crime data, there wasn’t enough information to tell whether crime went up, went down or stayed the same. The FBI had estimated results for areas that declined to submit data or were unable to do so.

That’s partly because the FBI had rolled out a new reporting system. The data collection system, called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, gathered more detail on individual incidents but also required training and tech upgrades by state and local policing agencies.

For the first time in two decades, the national law enforcement reporting rate fell below 70% in 2021, primarily due to the FBI’s transition. In 2022, many law enforcement agencies across the country were not NIBRS-certified in time to submit their 2021 crime data, which contributed to lower reporting rates.

Even before the new system launched, there was a gap in reporting nationwide. Prior to 2021, 23% of U.S. law enforcement agencies on average did not report any crime data to the FBI. In 2020, 24% of agencies did not report, and in 2021, it surged to 40%.

Inconsistent reporting not only hampers the ability to draw comparisons over time and across state lines, but also injects uncertainty into discussions about crime, said Ames Grawert, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s justice program. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning law and policy group.

“Issues like that are invariably going to lead to some people having a misunderstanding of crime data — makes it harder to talk about crime in some states, especially given the low participation rate in Florida, for example,” Grawert said in an interview with Stateline.

The FBI’s latest crime report, released earlier this month, offers a glimmer of progress toward transparency: Seventy-one percent of law enforcement agencies nationwide submitted data through NIBRS or the FBI’s previous reporting system, up 11 percentage points from last year. About 60% of participating law enforcement agencies submitted their data exclusively through NIBRS this year. The FBI accepted data through both NIBRS and the older system this year, a change from last year’s NIBRS-only approach.

According to the incomplete numbers, violent crime in the U.S. dropped last year, returning to pre-pandemic levels, while property crimes saw a significant increase.

While crime data reporting to the FBI is optional, some states, such as Illinois and Minnesota, have laws requiring their local law enforcement agencies to report crime data to their state law enforcement agencies. State law enforcement agencies often serve as clearinghouses for local crime data, and in some states, they are responsible for sharing this data with the feds. Some local agencies also may send their data directly to the FBI.

But some states lag.

Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and West Virginia, for example, all remain below the 50% reporting mark, which means less than half of the police departments in their states submitted 2022 crime data to the FBI. Despite these reporting rates, the data shows that greater shares of these state’s populations were represented in last year’s data than in 2021.

Florida has had the lowest reporting rate two years in a row — 6% in 2021 and 44% in 2022 — partly because of the state’s ongoing transition to NIBRS. For 2021, the FBI did not accept Florida’s data through the previous data collection system, which would have represented about 58% of the state’s population, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Public Information Office.

“It’s a problem in both red and blue states, it’s also a local issue,” Kylie Murdock, a policy adviser with Third Way, a left-leaning national think tank, said in an interview with Stateline.

“When people use this data to back up tough-on-crime approaches, and say, ‘Our approach in this state is working’ —?when in reality, that’s not necessarily the truth because you don’t know the full scope of the problem,” said Murdock.

Roughly a quarter of the U.S. population was not represented in the 2022 federal crime data, according to a Stateline analysis. More than 6,000 of 22,116 law enforcement agencies did not submit data.

Major police departments, including those in big cities such as Los Angeles and New York, did not submit any data in 2021. NYPD said it couldn’t submit summary statistics in 2021 as it had previously because of the FBI’s change in requirements, but was NIBRS-certified this year. Both cities’ departments did submit summary data to the FBI in 2022 through the old reporting system.

The FBI’s 2021 agency participation data shows that the 10 states with the lowest reporting rates included a balanced mix of both blue and red states, while last year’s data shows more red states among the 10 states with the lowest reporting rates.

Political and social consequences

The gaps in the FBI’s crime data create significant challenges for researchers and policymakers attempting to make sense of crime trends. As elections draw near and crime has reclaimed the spotlight, these challenges become increasingly pressing.

During last year’s congressional elections, 61% of registered voters said violent crime would be very important when making their decision about whom to vote for, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

While the overall violent crime rate has steadily declined on average over the past 20 years, the Pew Research Center suggested that voters might be reacting to specific types of violent crime, such as homicide, which saw a 30% increase between 2019 and 2020 — one of the largest year-over-year increases on record.

“Voters tend to not have that kind of access. Politicians then try to play on voters’ concerns about crime, but without giving voters the information that will actually be useful for them,” Harvey said.

Experts expect that the challenge of incomplete national crime data — and the incomplete picture it presents — will persist for years because many law enforcement agencies still are working to adopt the new reporting system.

That could affect how policymakers allocate money for law enforcement, crime prevention programs and other public safety initiatives. With crime data, it’s important to know what types of crimes are included and to avoid narrow timeframes when describing trends, said Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist for the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research think tank.

“Oftentimes relying on the FBI data, which tends to be outdated, really allows politicians to sensationalize a few news stories. Without having more up-to-date data, it may not be accurate,” Lopez told Stateline.

“Politician or otherwise, when we talk about crime, it’s really important to have a larger context.”

Federal assistance

Law enforcement agencies nationwide have received over $180 million in federal funding to help with the transition since the FBI’s switch to its new NIBRS reporting system was announced in 2015. Many law enforcement agencies are still working to fully transition to the new system.

For example, in Louisiana, the agencies serving some of the state’s most populous cities, including Lafayette, New Orleans and Shreveport, did not report any data to the FBI last year because they were implementing new records management systems, according to Jim Craft, the executive director of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement.

Louisiana’s low reporting rate may be due to smaller law enforcement agencies reporting crime statistics through their local sheriff’s office, which makes it look like fewer agencies are reporting, Craft wrote in an email.

In Hawaii, the police departments serving Maui and Hawaii counties were not certified in time to submit data through NIBRS to the FBI last year, according to Paul Perrone, the director of the Hawaii Uniform Crime Reporting program. Last month, Hawaii became one of the few states where all law enforcement agencies are NIBRS-certified, Perrone wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, even as more law enforcement agencies submit data in coming years, experts warn that the FBI’s database accounts only for crimes reported to the police. And according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, over 50% of violent crimes and about 70% of property crimes are never reported.

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A memorial at the site where 23-year-old Elijah McClain was violently detained by Aurora, Colorado, police in August 2019 while he was walking home from a convenience store. (Moe Clark/Colorado Newsline)

The way Sheldon Haleck’s parents see it, the 38-year-old’s only crime was jaywalking. But that March night in 2015, after Honolulu police found him behaving erratically, they pepper-sprayed him, shocked him with a Taser, and restrained him. Haleck became unresponsive and was taken to a hospital. Before his parents could get from their home in Utah to Hawaii, the former Hawaii Air National Guardsman was taken off life support.

“Nobody’s supposed to die from something like this,” said Haleck’s father, William.

An initial autopsy ruled Haleck’s death a homicide and his family filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against the three officers who tried to remove him from the street. The case should have been “one of the easiest wrongful death cases” to win, said Eric Seitz, an attorney who represented Haleck’s family.

But the officers’ attorneys seized on a largely discredited, four-decade-old diagnostic theory called “excited delirium,” which has been increasingly used over the past 15 years as a legal defense to explain how a person experiencing severe agitation can die suddenly through no fault of the police. “The entire use of that particular theory, I think, is what convinced the jury,” Seitz said.

Haleck’s case is just one legal battle in which the theory of excited delirium exonerated law enforcement despite mounting opposition to the term among most prominent medical groups. The theory has been cited as a defense in the 2020 deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis; Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York; and Angelo Quinto in Antioch, California. It figures in a criminal trial against two police officers involved in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado, now underway. It has allowed defense attorneys to argue that individuals in police custody died not of restraint, not of a Taser shock, but of a medical condition that can lead to sudden death.

But now, the American College of Emergency Physicians will vote at an October meeting on whether to formally disavow its 2009 position paper supporting excited delirium as a diagnosis that helped undergird those court cases. The draft resolution also calls on ACEP to discourage physicians who serve as expert witnesses from promoting the theory in criminal and civil trials.

“It’s junk science,” said Martin Chenevert, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, who often testifies as an expert witness. The theory has been used to provide a cover for police misconduct, he said. “It had an agenda.”

Passing the resolution wouldn’t bring Haleck back, but his parents hope it would prevent other families from experiencing their agony. “May that excited delirium die here,” said his mother, Verdell.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering signing into law a bill passed Sept. 12 that would do much of the same in his state.

“If we don’t fully denounce this now, it will be there for the grasping, again,” said Jennifer Brody, a physician with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, who co-authored a 2021 editorial calling on organized medicine to denounce excited delirium. “Historically, we know what happens: The pendulum swings the other way.”

Most major medical societies, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, don’t recognize excited delirium as a medical condition. This year, the National Association of Medical Examiners rejected excited delirium as a cause of death. No blood test or other diagnostic test can confirm the syndrome. It’s not listed in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” a reference book of mental health conditions, nor does it have its own diagnostic code, a system used by health professionals to identify diseases and disorders.

But the argument’s pervasiveness in excessive-use-of-force cases has persisted in large part because of the American College of Emergency Physicians’ 2009 white paper proposing that individuals in a mental health crisis, often under the influence of drugs or alcohol, can exhibit superhuman strength as police try to control them, and then die from the condition.

The ACEP white paper has been cited in cases across the U.S., and lawyers who file police misconduct cases said that courts and judges accept the science without sufficient scrutiny.

ACEP’s position “has done a lot of harm” by justifying first responder tactics that contribute to a person’s death, said Joanna Naples-Mitchell, an attorney who worked on a Physicians for Human Rights review of excited delirium. The term has also been used in cases in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries, according to the group.

“This is a really important opportunity for ACEP to make things right,” she said of the upcoming vote.

ACEP officials declined KFF Health News requests for an interview.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the leading proponents of excited delirium produced research with funding from Taser International, a maker of stun guns used by police, which later changed its name to Axon. The research purported to show that the technique of prone restraint, in which suspects are lying face down on the ground with the police officer’s weight on top of them, and Taser shocks couldn’t kill someone. That research formed the basis of the white paper, providing an alternative cause of death that defense attorneys could argue in court. Many emergency physicians say the ACEP document never lived up to the group’s standard for clinical guidelines.

Axon officials did not respond to a call or email seeking comment on the white paper or the upcoming ACEP vote. In 2017, Taser officials used the American College of Emergency Physicians’ position on excited delirium as evidence that it is a “universally recognized condition,” according to Reuters.

A recent review published in the journal Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology concluded no scientific evidence exists for the diagnosis, and that the authors of the 2009 white paper engaged in circular reasoning and faulty logic.

“Excited delirium is a proxy for prone-related restraint when there is a death,” said Michael Freeman, an associate professor of forensic medicine at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who co-authored the review. “You don’t find that people get ‘excited delirium’ if they haven’t also been restrained.”

Between 2009 and 2019, Florida medical examiners attributed 85 deaths to excited delirium, and at least 62% involved the use of force by law enforcement, according to a January 2020 report in Florida Today. Black and Hispanic people accounted for 56% of 166 deaths in police custody attributed to excited delirium from 2010 to 2020, according to a December 2021 Virginia Law Review article.

This year, ACEP issued a formal statement saying the group no longer recognizes the term “excited delirium” and new guidance to doctors on how to treat individuals presenting with delirium and agitation in what it now calls “hyperactive delirium syndrome.” But the group stopped short of retracting the 2009 white paper. For the past 14 years, ACEP took no steps to withdraw the document or to discourage defense attorneys from using it in court.

Even now, lawyers say, they must continually debunk the theory.

“Excited delirium has continued to come up in every single restraint asphyxia case that my partner and I have handled,” said Julia Sherwin, a California civil rights attorney. “Instead of acknowledging that the person died from the police tactics, they want to point to this alternate theory of deaths.”

Now, plaintiffs’ attorneys say, if ACEP passes the resolution it would be the most meaningful step yet toward keeping the theory out of the courtroom. The resolution calls on ACEP to “clarify its position in writing that the 2009 white paper is inaccurate and outdated,” and to withdraw approval for it.

Despite the theory’s lack of scientific underpinning, backers of the ACEP resolution expect heated debate before the vote scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 7-8. Emergency physicians often encounter patients with agitation and delirium, they say, and are sympathetic to other first responders who share the challenge of managing such patients. While they have tools like sedation to help them in the emergency room, law enforcement officials must often subdue potentially dangerous individuals without such help.

Most people won’t die as a result of police tactics such as prone restraint or Taser use, but a small fraction do.

“It’s a crappy, crappy situation, when you have someone who’s out of control, who can’t make decisions for himself, and is potentially a threat somewhere,” said Jared Strote, an emergency medicine professor at the University of Washington. “It’s not like they have a sticker on their head that says, ‘Hey, I’m at high risk. If you hold me down, then I could go into sudden cardiac arrest.’”

Nonetheless, sentiment is growing among emergency physicians that the 2009 ACEP white paper has resulted in real harm and injustices, and it’s time to set it aside.

“We’ll be able to close the chapter on it and move forward to recognize explicitly that this was in error,” said Brooks Walsh, an emergency physician from Bridgeport, Connecticut, and a key player in bringing the resolution up for a vote. “We definitely have an ethical responsibility to address mistakes or evolutions in medical thinking.”

Chris Vanderveen, KUSA-TV’s director of special projects, contributed to this report.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

Terri Redwine, president of the local NAACP chapter, right, addresses, from left, Hopkinsville Police Department Chief Jason Newby, Hopkinsville Mayor James Knight and Christian County Judge-Executive Jerry Gilliam during a meeting on Aug. 21. (YouTube screenshot)

In the wake of an officer’s controversial social media post that drew both support and outrage from community members and tens of thousands of TikTok users, Hopkinsville Police Chief Jason Newby says he’s coordinating plans for all officers to undergo diversity training.

Officer Jerimiah Kline came under fire early this month after posting a TikTok video of him lip syncing “Try That in a Small Town” by country musician Jason Aldean. The song was described by critics as a call to racist vigilantism after the July 14 release of its music video, which was filmed at the site of a historic lynching and included news clips of violent clashes between police and protesters at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.

As debate stirred in the weeks following the video’s release, the song rose to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list, ignited widespread criticism, and had its video pulled by Country Music Television. It was later replaced with a version that omitted the most violent images.

In Kline’s TikTok video — posted the week after Aldean’s video release — he’s in uniform and next to a Hopkinsville police cruiser with emergency lights flashing. It prompted responses from critics who questioned why Kline would post a video featuring the Aldean song after the recent controversy surrounding it.

The concerns carry added significance in a diverse community. Approximately 27% of Hopkinsville residents are Black.

The video, which received more than 150,000 likes, was shared by dozens of supporters who posted videos of themselves lip syncing alongside Kline. Often, the posts included the hashtag #standwithjasonaldean.

Local officials first began receiving complaints about Kline’s video after TikToker Michael McWhorter — who has amassed 5.8 million followers under his handle @TizzyEnt by denouncing apparent racist, homophobic and violent behavior — drew attention to Kline’s take on the Aldean song.

As of Aug. 25, McWhorter’s response, which also points to other Kline videos that he argues are homophobic and unprofessional, had 1.8 million views and nearly 8,000 comments.

Kline, who uses the handle @nlc_gunsanddonuts, has since deleted the video and made his account private. However, his original Aldean video is the sole post under an account using the handle @nlc_gunsanddonutss. The description for the account says “Not agency affiliated. All Toks made off-duty.”

Police department responds, ‘addresses issue’

After receiving complaints about the video, Newby posted a statement to Facebook on Aug. 3 assuring the community that the “issue has been addressed and will not be an issue moving forward.” He went on to note that he was working with city officials to modify policies regarding employees’ use of social media.

In a brief interview with Hoptown Chronicle, Newby declined to identify Kline as the subject of complaints he received. But in an Aug. 4 letter obtained through a Kentucky Open Records Act request, he wrote the following to Human Resources Director Kenneth Grabara:

“Officer Kline had no ill intention when he made the video. He was simply suggesting that Hopkinsville Police Department is not going to tolerate criminals coming into our community and putting our citizens in harm’s way.

“Officer Kline acknowledged that even though he had no ill intention, he understands now how being in uniform while posting on social media can cause issues and it will not happen again.

“Officer Kline did not violate any Hopkinsville Police Department policies, however; I do feel there is a need to adjust our social media policy to better guide our employees in the use of social media and the reflection it may have on our city and agency.”

Newby also told Grabara that Kline would complete diversity awareness, workplace positivity and harassment prevention training.?

On Aug. 4, 10 and 15, records show that Kline took three online courses — Creating a Positive Work Environment; Diversity, Inclusion & Sensitivity; and Preventing Discrimination & Harassment: US Employees. The three classes — provided by online compliance training company Traliant — lasted a combined 1 hour and 25 minutes, Grabara said.

The day before Newby published his statement on the Hopkinsville Police Department’s Facebook page, Kline posted a TikTok that included an image that stated, “Disliking me is one thing. Being able to whoop my ass is another story. Stay safe.”?

The post included an audio clip that looped in the background. It said, “I just want to say this from the bottom of my heart. I’d like to take this chance to apologize … to absolutely nobody.” Still viewable on Aug. 16, the post has since been removed.?

Kline, 26, has been a sworn officer with HPD since March 2020. Previously he was a public safety officer, a position that can lead to sworn officer status after completion of the state police academy’s 20-week course.?

Hoptown Chronicle, in messages sent to the City Clerk’s Office and to Newby, requested to interview Kline. He has not responded.

An Aug. 2 email from Hopkinsville-Christian County Human Rights Commission Director Raychel Farmer to Newby and Hopkinsville Mayor James R. Knight expressed concern for the sentiments in Kline’s video and the negative attention it brought to Hopkinsville. In the email, Farmer urges the officials to “make a public statement of non-support of Officer Kline’s actions and that some disciplinary action will be taken.”

No disciplinary action or recent change in employment status is indicated by the records the city provided to Hoptown Chronicle. City officials said there were no records of citizen complaints involving Kline.?

The city denied Hoptown Chronicle’s request for Kline’s employee evaluations, citing a privacy exemption to the open records law. Hoptown Chronicle filed a second request, asking the city to reconsider based on a substantiated public interest that outweighs the privacy interest in this case. The city again denied the request for Kline’s evaluations.?

Community members express outrage, support?

The debate surrounding Kline’s social media messaging dominated the Aug. 15 meeting of Hopkinsville City Council. Fifteen people spoke before a packed council chambers, and of those, 10 were critical of him. Some said HPD should fire the officer for his online behavior.?

Kline, in civilian clothes, was present but did not speak.

While the video featuring “Try That in a Small Town” initially generated most of the pushback against Kline, the criticism heard at the council meeting centered around his use of the “OK” hand signal throughout social media.

The gesture has been adopted in recent years by white supremacists as a “white power” symbol. Kline’s supporters at the council meeting said it has a different, benign meaning to them. They described it as a game many have played since they were children, where the symbol is flashed to make someone look — similar to a “gotcha” game.??

In July 2018, four police officers in Jasper, Alabama, were suspended for flashing the same hand symbol in a photograph.?

“One of the issues was the picture with the hand sign. I don’t actually care what he thought it meant. It doesn’t matter,” Hopkinsville resident Becky Dearman told city council members.

“He is supposed to protect and serve all of us, and I feel not that protected,” she said. “The contents of his TikTok were not just racist, they were homophobic. One of the things that I told Mayor Knight was, ‘I’m going to be honest I wouldn’t feel super secure if I had a call to the police in the middle of the night and a cop that had put blatantly homophobic material up showed up to my house.’”

Nancy Askew, who is Dearman’s fiancée, said, “There wasn’t just a symbol on a photo. … There’s a clear pattern of behavior for his public image and the image that he portrays with his badge on.”

Jeff Taylor, a former state representative and economic development official for Tennessee Valley Authority and the state of Kentucky, asked for the “immediate dismissal” of Kline. He said the council should consider how many employees of a store, a factory, bank, hospital or school would keep their job if they flashed a symbol that community members view as racist.??

“He’s ruining it for a lot of good officers,” said Taylor. “And there are good officers.”

Taylor later told Hoptown Chronicle, “I truly don’t believe there’s (another) police force in the entire nation that would allow this.”

Cherry West, who previously owned a liquor store in Hopkinsville, spoke to council about negative views of Hopkinsville and the police force for past allegations of aggressive behavior toward soldiers and minorities. The perception persists, and it’s why? Clarksville, Tennessee, has vastly outpaced Hopkinsville in population growth, she said.

Robert Bussell, a Black man who described a longtime friendship with Kline and his family, said the meaning of the hand symbol has been blown out of proportion.?

“It’s as simple as, ‘I got you,’ or ‘Made you look,’” he said, adding, “It’s not about race.”

Bussell said he has personally seen Kline helping Black residents in distress.?

Former Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton Sumner, who stepped down earlier this year, said retirement allows him to speak with no filter. He described Kline’s TikTok videos — which frequently appear with the hashtag #humanizethebadge — as a light-hearted approach to help the community see police officers as people. He said those criticizing Kline are trying to cause controversy rather than trying to fix things.

Transparency, cooperation sought

During an NAACP meeting Aug. 21 in Hopkinsville City Council chambers, Newby told local chapter president Terri Redwine that he wants her to review changes that are coming to HPD policies in light of recent criticisms.

“We are changing nearly every policy that the Hopkinsville Police Department has. Once we have those in place … I would like for you and whatever committee to go over those with us for any recommendations for changes,” Newby told Redwine.

The meeting included several NAACP members who observed while Redwine questioned Newby, the mayor and Christian County Judge-Executive Jerry Gilliam on several race-related issues. The city taped the meeting and published the video on its YouTube channel.

“/]

A few days before the NAACP meeting, Redwine and Newby met to discuss the controversy over Kline’s social media, she said.

Newby declined to elaborate on their discussion during the meeting. “The concerns were heard. It has been addressed and it is still being addressed. And that’s about as much as I can say,” he said.

While Redwine said the NAACP “will not continue to debate the Jerimiah Kline debacle,” she also spoke about race relations more broadly and what is at stake in Hopkinsville.

“I feel that too many of our Black people are moving out of the city of Hopkinsville because they are being racially profiled,” she said, adding her siblings won’t even come to the city because they believe it is “blatantly racist.”

Local officials cannot control everything, but others pick up “the vibe that you portray,” she told Newby, Knight and Gilliam.

“We do not want another Breonna Taylor here in Hopkinsville. We don’t want division. We want this community to remain our community as a whole. We don’t need outsiders here telling us how to run our community,” she said.

But if outside help is needed, it will happen, she said.

Redwine said her approach is to go straight to local officials for answers. But others won’t do that, she warned.

She also addressed members of the community. Prayer, transparency and communication are key, she said, adding “stay off social media and the madness.”

Complaining on social media is useless, she said. If someone has a complaint, they ought to file a formal complaint. “We must have a paper trail,” she said.

Redwine, who became the chapter president earlier this year, encouraged local residents to join the NAACP. The organization is not a “secret society,” she said.

“I don’t want it to be us versus them. I want it to be we the people,” she said.

She also said, “I live here in Hopkinsville. I will not be harassed by no police officers because of what I said, because you are going to hear it if I do.”

Looking forward

Newby told Hoptown Chronicle in an Aug. 22 email that the city’s human resources office is working with Hopkinsville Community College to provide diversity training for the officers. The details are pending.

Since Newby became chief earlier this year, HPD has made several hires and now has 79 officers. It is the first time in about 10 years that all of the department’s positions have been filled, officials said at the Aug. 1 city council meeting.

“It is my plan to have all officers attend the training,” Newby said in the email

This article is republished from Hoptown Chronicle.

Pine Mountain Settlement School's Charlotte F. Hedges Memorial Chapel, designed by architect Mary Rockwell Hook was built 1922-24. Italian immigrant Luigi Zande, a stonemason, worked on the building. (Photo from Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections)

This story has been updated with a statement released Wednesday ?by Pine Mountain Settlement School.

An Appalachian arts nonprofit’s gathering at Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County ended abruptly last weekend after local residents objected to the group’s presence in the chapel, raising concerns among attendees about their safety.

A statement issued by the Waymakers Collective says participants decided to end their annual assembly a day early “for the safety of everyone in attendance,” including the school’s staff.

The decision to leave came after “a group of white men and women in trucks and on ATVs from the surrounding” area blocked exit roads and paths and demanded that conference participants leave the chapel.

“We were shocked by this as we had rented out the entire campus of PMSS for our event and were treating the entire property with respect and in the manner we had communicated to PMSS prior to the event,” the Waymakers statement said.

Kentucky State Police and the Harlan County sheriff’s office were called to the scene Saturday but no charges or arrests were made.

Harlan County Sheriff Chris Brewer said deputies remained at the campus “for several hours out of precaution to keep the peace.” He also said his office is not conducting an investigation.

The? confrontation has already cost the school one event. Nicole Garneau, organizer of the Rebellious Performance Retreat, said she is moving the five-day immersive theater workshop from Pine Mountain Settlement School, where it had been scheduled to be held over Labor Day weekend.

“I cannot host a retreat dedicated to supporting artists working on challenging material in a place where we do not feel safe,” Garneau told the Lantern in an email.?“I will be sharing the new location of the retreat only with people who are registered.”?

A statement released Wednesday by the Pine Mountain Settlement School said that photos of the conference posted on social media, especially of the chapel, “upset some members of the local community, who interpreted this as non-Christian.” They reached out to interim director Jason Brashear and board of trustees chair James Greene who asked the Waymakers to vacate the chapel.

“The Collective agreed they would relocate the space at their next class break. However, some community members decided on their own to come to campus, entering the chapel, and blocking access to buildings and roads,” says the PMSS statement.

The statement, printed below, says the school “is reviewing its policies and procedures to ensure that this type of misunderstanding does not occur in the future and to ensure the safety of all guests, visitors, and staff. Pine Mountain will continue its tradition of being open and welcoming to all as well as to promote mutual understanding among all those it serves.”

Founded in 1913 and set on 800 acres, the Pine Mountain Settlement School is a national historic landmark. It once served as a boarding school for young Kentuckians; its residence and dining halls and other buildings still host visitors and events throughout the year, including wildflower and fall color weekends.

Brashear, the interim director, said 5,000 students visited last year to hike, study nature and learn square dancing and crafts.

The Kentucky Arts Council provides operating support to the school “from state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts,” according to the PMSS website.

The Kentucky Natural Lands Trust, which raises money to preserve Kentucky forests and natural habitats, has held artists weekends at the campus. The land trust, Kentucky songwriter Daniel Martin Moore and 40 musicians teamed up in 2019 to produce a double album titled “Pine Mountain Sessions” recorded in the school’s chapel which benefited KNLT and the school.

The Waymakers Collective, which says it has distributed more than $1 million in grants to Appalachian artists and arts organizations, describes itself as “a multiracial group that is also inclusive of queer and trans people.”?

The Waymakers’ statement said that for its annual gathering the chapel had been set up as space “for rest and quiet reflection” and “healing.”

“The set up of the room included pillows, meditation cushions, soothing lights, plants, crystals, and some artwork including a painting that included an ‘Om’ symbol,” the statement said.

“It was a spa-like environment to help facilitate restorativeness, rest, and reflection.”?

“Our coordinator specifically asked if there were any special instructions that should be honored in the chapel,” the statement says. “The only instructions given were not to move the pews as the floors were recently resurfaced. Our team requested two tables in the chapel to display aromatherapy oils and other items for the participants, and upon our arrival, the tables were set up?by the PMSS staff.”

On Saturday, a few conference participants were “gathered in the chapel to rest: taking naps or sitting in quiet reflection or prayer” when two men and a woman who were not part of the group entered and sat apart watching, said the statement.

More people arrived, said the statement, and conference attendees were told that they were “desecrating a Christian space” amid demands that they leave, according to the statement, which also said the local residents used “their vehicles to block the roads and paths to exit.”

The settlement school staff intervened and separated the two groups, said the statement.

“The group of people who entered the chapel stayed for over an hour, often lingering on the outside of where we were gathered as though to tell us we were not welcome and were being watched,” the statement said.

The statement says they later learned that Facebook posts had accused the group of “desecrating the chapel and other horrible allegations that simply are not true.”

The weekly Tri-City News, also of Harlan County, in an article posted on its Facebook page, reported that Bledsoe resident Tate Napier said that he was part of a group of “eight or nine” who entered the chapel “because we wanted to make sure the House of The Lord wasn’t being disrespected.”?

Napier is quoted as saying, “The people in the chapel said they were doing nothing wrong, and I asked if they were in there to worship Jesus, and a few started raising their voices at me, so I told them to just get their stuff — that we weren’t there to argue, and I even helped them gather their things and pack them to their cars. After that all happened, the state police and sheriff deputies showed up, and they agreed to stay out of the chapel, but then, ultimately, they decided to leave because they said they felt unsafe.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Napier posted on his Facebook page that he had received a lot of requests from reporters and journalists — the Lantern sent him a direct message via Facebook — seeking interviews but that he had decided to “leave it” with the interview he gave “a local journalist” on Saturday.

“The news and social media are tools the devil uses the most to stir up division, and I don’t want to partake in anymore,” he said.

Garneau, an actor who has performed at the settlement school, said the decision to cancel the Labor Day weekend performance retreat had left her angry and sad.

“I have attended many wonderful gatherings at Pine Mountain Settlement School, many of which were dedicated to social and racial justice. Rural Eastern Kentucky needs a place like PMSS where people can come together to make Kentucky, and the world, a better place,” she said.?

“I am angry and sad that some members of the Harlan community decided to violate a sacred space for healing, and in so doing, traumatize an entire community of folks gathered at PMSS. I fear this will have repercussions for years to come.”?

The Waymakers Collective statement ended with an invitation to the settlement school staff and leadership to “think, with us, about how to ensure Pine Mountain Settlement School continues to be the inclusive, beautiful, and hospitable place it has historically been for many of us — including how best to communicate with potential guests what your boundaries are for the use of your campus.”

GOP gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron waves to the crowd during his election party on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at the Galt House in Louisville. (Austin Anthony / for the Kentucky Lantern)

Members of the Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron in the 2023 gubernatorial election.?

The Kentucky FOP voted on the decision Monday at a biennial national conference in Las Vegas. Results were announced Tuesday morning.?

“Attorney General Cameron has been a friend to the FOP since the day he stepped foot into public office,” Kentucky State FOP President and Clark County Sheriff Berl Perdue Jr. said in a press release. “We are excited to stand with Daniel and look forward to helping him during the remaining months of the campaign.”

The FOP distributed questionnaire responses from both Cameron and Beshear to its members. In recent weeks, the candidates have released their public safety plans, which include more money for Kentucky’s law enforcement officers using the state’s rainy day fund. Kentucky finished the 2023 fiscal year with a revenue surplus estimated at $1.4 billion, the third year in a row the surplus has topped $1 billion, while bringing in a record $15.1 billion in general fund tax revenue.

Cameron’s public safety plan largely focused on Louisville. Among his points, he wants the legislature to authorize Kentucky State Police to conduct wiretaps and increase penalties for drug traffickers, such as allowing murder charges against drug dealers when someone dies from a substance they distributed.?

Beshear released a budget proposal last week, months ahead of the 2024 legislative session, that called for funding more training for police officers, establishing grants for local law enforcement agencies to upgrade their body armor, and changing pensions, including moving all law enforcement pension plans back to defined pension benefits.?

In the 2019 election, the FOP endorsed Beshear in his campaign against former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. Members also endorsed Cameron for attorney general that year.?

The state FOP has more than 10,700 members, making it one of the largest organizations representing law enforcement officials across the state.

Gov. Andy Beshear released his public safety plan on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. (File photo for Kentucky Lantern by McKenna Horsley)

Gov. Andy Beshear on Wednesday called for more money for training, body armor and raises for law enforcement in what he says will be the first of several spending plans he’ll announce over the next month.

Beshear acknowledged that governors typically reveal budget proposals around the time lawmakers return to Frankfort in January, but said he was taking this tack because House Republicans filed an executive branch budget proposal before he unveiled his own in 2022.

Of course, it remains to be seen who will oversee the executive branch when the General Assembly convenes for the 60-day session to decide on appropriations. Beshear, a Democrat, is running for reelection against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Voters will decide between them in November.

“These are real steps, real actions,” Beshear said after introducing his plan. “It’s one thing to say you back to blue and it’s another to do something about it, to provide the resources, to take the steps that improve public safety.”

In response, Cameron, who released his own 12-point public safety plan last month, issued a statement saying Beshear was “trying to rewrite his record” in an election year. He called Beshear the “catch and release candidate,” referring to a 2021 report about inmates who were released early during the pandemic. The report found a third were later charged with a felony.

“I am still the only candidate in this race with a plan to reduce crime,” Cameron said. “And I am the only candidate in this race who actually has the relationships in the legislature to deliver.”

Here’s what Beshear is calling for in the next state budget:

• Changes to law enforcement pensions, which includes moving all law enforcement pension plans back to defined pension benefits as well as increasing pension income for retired KSP troopers and local jurisdictions in those plans.
• A $2,500 raise for all KRS Chapter 16 employees, which includes troopers, vehicle enforcement officers and more.
• Raising the current $4,300 training stipend for local law enforcement officers to $4,800, building on a $300 increase in the current budget. Beshear would also like to make part-time local law enforcement officers eligible for the training stipend.
• Making grant funds available to upgrade body armor for local law enforcement officers.

Cameron’s public safety plan included $5,000 bonuses for all Kentucky law enforcement officers, opposing subpoena powers for civilian review boards that give oversight to police departments, and focused largely on Louisville.

Both Beshear and Cameron highlighted a surplus in the state’s “rainy day fund” in their announcements. Kentucky finished the 2023 fiscal year with a revenue surplus estimated at $1.4 billion, the third year in a row the surplus has topped $1 billion, while bringing in a record $15.1 billion in general fund tax revenue.

The two candidates have also racked up endorsements from various law enforcement officers in the state.

On Wednesday, Beshear was joined by Kentucky State Commissioner Col. Phillip Burnett Jr. and KSP Trooper Billy Ball, who survived an event that Beshear said inspired the proposed body armor grants.

Ball was among officers who responded to what would become a deadly shooting in Floyd County in 2022. Three troopers and a police dog died. Ball recounted how body armor protected him during the incident so he could aid other troopers.

“I decided to leave cover and move forward to locate the shooter but little did I know I would be the next target,” Ball said. “I was blinded by the evening sun and the shooter fired but missed me. The next shot struck me in the back as I turned to retreat to cover. The round hit my plate carrier which provided such protection, I initially questioned if I’d even been shot.”

Ball encouraged other police officers to wear body armor not just to protect themselves, but make themselves a better officer and allow them to continue to serve.

Burnett, appointed by Beshear in 2021, said that recent pay increases for troopers supported by the governor and the General Assembly have made KSP competitive in recruitment. KSP went from ranking 74th among state agencies for starting pay when Burnett started in 2021 to now being in the top five. The agency has been advertising its starting pay as $65,000.

“We’re really good right now but we have to be looking at how our agency operates,” Burnett said. “We have to be looking out into the future. And by doing these things, we’re looking out into the future to make sure that we always remain competitive.”

Crime in Kentucky was down in 2022 compared with the previous year. (Photo by Brandon Bell, Getty Images)

Incidents of violent crime decreased across Kentucky in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to an annual state report released Wednesday.?

The 2022 Crime in Kentucky Report showed about a 9.2% drop in the number of reported Group A offenses — which include the state’s most serious offenses including arson, homicide, bribery, burglary, and fraud — compared to 2021 as reported by local law enforcement agencies. The data comes from the National Incident-Based Reporting System.

Among Group A offenses, reports of animal cruelty increased by 19%, reports of homicide decreased by 33% and reports of counterfeiting and forgery increased by 19%.?

The most common Group A offenses reported were drug and narcotic related, which made up 22.6% of the total offenses, and larceny and theft, which accounted for 23.9% of the total Group A offenses. Both those categories of offenses were down from 2021.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear during a Wednesday news conference said Kentucky State Police attribute some of the increases in specific crimes to “more law enforcement bringing the crime to light and making arrests.”?

“Like every crime, we will make sure that our state and local law enforcement have the resources they need to fight back,” Beshear said.

Among the more than 300,000 total reported Group A and Group B offenses, Black people were disproportionately arrested in the state, reflecting nationwide racial disparities in arrests.?

Black people were arrested 50,169 times for various offenses in 2022, about 15.4% of all offenses that year. Black Kentuckians make up about 8.7% of the state’s population.?

The report also includes a breakdown of offenses by county, data on reported hate crimes and breakdowns of offenses by age, race and sex.?

Republican Daniel Cameron talks about his public safety plan in Louisville, July 11, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

LOUISVILLE — Republican Daniel Cameron says that as governor he would oppose subpoena powers for civilian police review boards and support giving Kentucky law enforcement officers a $5,000 bonus to improve recruitment and retention.

The proposals are part of a 12-point public safety plan that Cameron unveiled Tuesday and that focuses largely on Louisville.?

Cameron’s other ideas include the legislature authorizing Kentucky State Police to conduct wiretaps and increasing penalties for drug traffickers, such as allowing murder charges against drug dealers when someone dies from a substance they distributed.?

“Public safety is the first responsibility of the government,” said Cameron, who is currently Kentucky’s attorney general. “We don’t have streets that are safe. Our economy and our schools suffer. Every Kentuckian has the right to live and move freely around their community without fear.”?

Cameron estimated the state has more than 12,000 officers, meaning that about $65 million would be needed to provide his proposed bonuses. He said funding could potentially come from the state’s “rainy day fund.”

Kentucky finished the 2023 fiscal year with a revenue surplus estimated at $1.4 billion, the third year in a row the surplus has topped $1 billion, while bringing in a record $15.1 billion in general fund tax revenue.

The Republican nominee for governor spoke about his plan at news conferences in Louisville and Lexington Tuesday. In Louisville, he was joined by law enforcement officials, including former KSP Commissioner Mark Miller, St. Matthews Chief of Police Barry Wilkerson and Oldham County Sheriff Tim Wakefield.?

Cameron is seeking to unseat Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who recently touted the endorsements of 35 law enforcement officials. During the primary election, Cameron said he was endorsed by more than 100 law enforcement officials.?

Alex Floyd, the communications director for Beshear’s campaign, said in a statement that Cameron “has refused to take any responsibility for crime as attorney general and helped cover for Matt Bevin’s indefensible pardons for murderers and a child rapist.” Democrats have previously attempted to link Cameron to former Gov. Matt Bevin’s controversial pardons.?

“Unlike Cameron’s record of covering for criminals and lying about grand jury proceedings, Andy Beshear actually delivered pay raises for law enforcement — leading to the largest Kentucky State Police recruiting class in years,” Floyd said.?

Cameron’s policies also include establishing a Kentucky State Police post in Louisville and reforming the Kentucky Parole Board by increasing the vote threshold for release and giving the governor the power to remove members at-will.?

Additionally, he is calling for passing a statewide wiretapping law that mirrors federal regulations and includes judicial review procedures; using overdose mapping tools to rapidly increase resources to drug hot spots; mandating DNA collection for serious felonies, such as rape, murder or burglary, and ensuring protections to automatically purge DNA if a case is acquitted or dismissed with prejudice; and supporting Group Violence Intervention efforts.?

A KSP post in Louisville?

Cameron had previously proposed a KSP post be created in Louisville to aid local law enforcement when dealing with violent crimes. Beshear has said the idea “shows a lack of confidence” in the Louisville Metro Police Department.?

After a gunman killed five people in downtown Louisville at the Old National Bank earlier this year, Mayor Craig Greenberg called on Kentucky’s General Assembly to allow local governments to make policy decisions regarding gun violence in their communities. On Tuesday, Cameron reiterated that he does not support gun control when asked about Greenburg’s plea.?

“What I have offered is if we are serious about addressing the challenge of violent crime in this county and in this city, then we need to put a Kentucky State Police post here in our largest county,” Cameron said.

According to the national nonprofit tracker Gun Violence Archive, Kentucky has had 443 shootings in 2023 as of Tuesday, with 247 in Louisville. Lexington has had 51 shootings, the second most in that time frame.?

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice reported widespread civil rights abuses by Louisville police and filed charges against four officers for their roles in obtaining the search warrant that led to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020. Cameron, the special prosecutor who had investigated Taylor’s shooting, had recommended charges only against an officer who fired into Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment, sparking criticism from Taylor’s family and others.?

Both Lexington and Louisville have boards that include civilian members that can review complaints against local police. In 2021, a bill was proposed in the General Assembly to give civilian review boards subpoena power, but it failed.

“If an independent organization wants to be engaged constructively in conversations with our law enforcement community, I wholeheartedly support that,” Cameron said. “Where I draw the line is that subpoena power that can be used to harass and denigrate our law enforcement community.”

Asked to provide an example of a civilian review board harassing law enforcement officers, Cameron did not cite a specific situation. Since subpoenas can be issued through the judicial process, he said a third party does not need that power.?

Civilian review boards are “a very important way to ensure fairness in communities, said Ed Monahan, who led the state’s public defenders as Kentucky public advocate from 2008 to 2017. But denying the boards subpoena power would reduce them to “meaningless symbolic entities,” Monahan told the Lantern.

“It’s interesting because an attorney general, prosecutor, judges, their primary responsibility is to ensure people are accountable for their behavior,” Monahan said. “And while all of us are so grateful to law enforcement personnel who give up so much for the community, there are some whose behavior is inappropriate, and they should be held accountable through a fair process that is comprehensive, and that involves having all the evidence.”

What could Cameron’s policies mean for Kentucky??

Kate Miller, the advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, told the Lantern that most of Cameron’s public safety policies are “pretty inconsistent with what policy experts from the right and the left have been recommending.”?

When it comes to increasing penalties for drug traffickers, Miller said Kentucky already has some of the highest rates of incarceration and drug overdoses in the nation. She said a majority of people selling drugs are often doing so because of addiction and “we’re not going to incarcerate ourselves out of addiction.” ?Opponents of a similar law in Texas made the same point.?

Monahan said “much of the behavior that results in people being involved in the criminal legal system in Kentucky is related to drug use or mental illness.” A strong plan to address those issues would “provide for ways to assist people who have substance abuse and mental health issues (and) deal with all of the things associated with those kinds of problems and addictions.”?

“And I don’t see that in this plan, other than he does have … ‘overdose mapping to surge resources to drug hotspots,’” Monahan said, adding that support for social services in those communities would also be valuable.?

Cameron is responsible for planning and overseeing distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in opioid settlements from the drug industry after the legislature made the Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission part of the attorney general’s office. Earlier this year Cameron held roundtables around the state to brainstorm strategies for countering the epidemic of opioid use disorder and the rise in fentanyl overdose deaths.

Monahan said he was unaware of widespread complaints about the Kentucky Parole Board. He said Cameron’s call to give the governor the power to remove board members and increase vote threshold for release would be “imprudent.” The board is “very cautious about their decisions” when considering a release.

“We would benefit from reform of the Parole Board, but it would be for the Parole Board to have better methods of assessing future risk on the merits rather than the current methods that they’re using,” Monahan said.

On mandatory DNA collection, Miller said Cameron’s inclusion of provisions to purge collected personal data in some cases are appreciated, but other threats still remain, such as security breaches or mishandling of information. It’s more commonplace for the government to have personal data on citizens, so “we’re very, very, very wary of any push to increase the use of DNA collection” including those innocent, she added.?

Monahan agreed that Cameron’s positions would see support in the legislature, noting a number of recently passed laws establish more crimes and harsher penalties.??

At this point, it’s hard to compare Cameron and Beshear on public safety, Miller said. Both have supported policies the ACLU agrees and disagrees with.

“It’s becoming less and less partisan to make recommendations related to justice reform that are really aimed at making us safer, and that don’t exclusively rely on incarcerating every individual for everything they’ve ever done wrong in their entire lives. … On the whole, I think we’re still trending in that direction,” Miller said.

Cameron told reporters that he has met with leaders of Kentucky’s Republican supermajority in both the House and Senate regarding the plan and they “agree that reducing crime is something that we will be able to work on together.”?

Wakefield, the Oldham County sheriff, gave Cameron high marks. “’I’ll have to say in my 34-year career, this is the first time I’ve seen someone put together a comprehensive plan, from recruitment to actual penalty phases, to take care of the problems that are facing the commonwealth today.”?

Following social media posts and local news reports about flyers promoting a white supremacy group in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, police have launched an investigation.?

A copy of a flyer posted online shows it is from the Trinity White Knights Ku Klux Klan. It asks residents to report crimes and drug dealers to the group.??

“We have copies of the flyers, so feel free to throw yours in the trash, where they belong,” a Mt. Sterling Police Department press release said. “The M.S.P.D. and City of Mt. Sterling does not tolerate any kind of hate or bigotry in our community.”

On Sunday, the department received several reports of flyers left overnight on vehicles in the areas of Pines on Main and the Holly Hills subdivision. Police say the flyers contained “the beliefs of a hate group from another city.”?

“Investigators are working to identify the individuals and we are asking the public for their help,” the press release said. “If you reside in any of these subdivisions and have any information, please call us at (859) 498-8899. You can also leave us a message on our FB page. We are seeking any possible surveillance videos or descriptions.”

Lexington TV station LEX18 reported that some of its viewers said similar flyers were distributed in Paris, Kentucky.?

The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as a hate group for its racist views and attempts to portray itself as a modern “white civil rights” organization. In 2015, SPLC said the Trinity White Knights chapter was based in Georgetown.?

A line of police officers stand during a community vigil honoring the victims of the Louisville mass shooting on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, at the Muhammad Ali Center plaza in Louisville, Kentucky. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

A Louisville police officer who was injured while trying to stop a mass shooter in early April is making “remarkable progress,” his family said Thursday.?

Officer Nickolas Wilt took a gunshot to the head on April 10 while responding to a shooting at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville.?

He was one of nine people who were injured when a gunman brought a legally-purchased AR-15 into his place of work and killed five coworkers.?

Cory Galloway, Wilt’s field training officer, killed the shooter and was also wounded. Wilt was working his fourth shift as a police officer when he was injured on April 10.?

Wilt “is now able to respond more consistently to yes/no questions, indicating improved cognitive function,” the family reported via the Louisville Metro Police Department on social media.?

“Although his speech remains limited to 1-2 words at a time and is not yet consistent, he is making daily strides in this area as well,” the family said.?

With the help of a harness, Wilt has also started walking again “and is working on regaining strength in his legs.”?

Wilt, who was hospitalized for a month following his injury, battled with pneumonia and other lung complications.?

He’s now brushing his teeth with “minimal assistance,” the family said.?

“His determination and fighting spirit are evident as he confronts his challenges head-on and still isn’t backing down,” his family said. “Officer Wilt’s progress is truly inspiring, and his determination is a testament to his resilience. The journey towards full recovery may still be ongoing, but every day brings new advancements and achievements.”?

Protesters and volunteers prepare a Breonna Taylor art installation by laying posters and flowers before the "Praise in the Park" event at the Big Four Lawn on June 5, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky. The event commemorated what would have been Breonna Taylor’s 28th birthday. Taylor was a Black woman killed by police during a botched drug raid on her apartment on March 13, 2020, which sparked nationwide protests. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Mayor Greenberg, when will you listen to us?

In May 2020, my city came alive in unity and in pain asking, once again, to be heard. Sparked by the unjust murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, hundreds of Louisville residents gathered in peaceful demonstrations to protest police violence against Black people. In our collective frustration, we banded together on streets and sidewalks for months to demand change. Instead, we were met with the very violence we were protesting.

I attended many of the demonstrations that summer to protect and support my community. I thought of my daughters and their generation’s futures. I wanted to be there to make sure that everyone was safe. Each day, the?Louisville Metro Police Department responded with military-type force and intimidation, terrorizing peaceful protestors.

As a board member of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, I worked with other members to bring in supplies to help treat pain and injuries from tear gas, pepper balls, and chemical munitions. But I found myself, and other board members, becoming victims of that same violence.

One night, I watched from a parking lot as folks of all ages, including children, gathered near Injustice Square Park. Two friends joined me, one in a wheelchair, as the group marched and chanted. I felt the tear gas before I saw it. I squeezed my eyes shut as the chemicals burned but quickly fell to the ground, unable to see, unable to breathe. I crawled on my hands and knees, the sounds of screams, cries, and chaos in the distance. Earlier that day, officers were caught on cell phone cameras destroying jugs of water and milk, essential first aid items for protesters exposed to tear gas. Instances like this played out on repeat night after night. These recurrent scenes still haunt me.

Over the last two years, the Alliance has attempted to make calls for reform to the City of Louisville to no avail. Nearly two years later, many of us are still feeling the physical and emotional effects of the violence we encountered that summer and very little has been done to address our concerns.

We relived these painful memories once again, when the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report?outlining the many, varied ways that LMPD violates our rights. Citing the 2020 protests, the DOJ’s investigation revealed that LMPD has shown a “pattern or practice” of excessive and indiscriminate force against peaceful protestors, violating the First and Fourth Amendments. The DOJ found that LMPD repeatedly used unlawful and excessive force against peaceful protestors — often not only failing to de-escalate situations, but actually engaging in behavior that escalated these interactions and using indiscriminate force “without individualized and adequate justifications.”

The report also raises deeply troubling findings of racial discrimination and bias by LMPD officers that echo the racial discrimination that Black people in Louisville experienced at the hands of the LMPD throughout the 2020 Uprising and continue to experience each day.

The DOJ’s findings, while infuriating, were not surprising for those of us who live in Louisville. These findings echoed what our communities live with and witness every day, and confirm what we have been saying for years: Despite all that we have suffered to make our voices heard, the City of Louisville still isn’t listening. In fact, Louisville ignored our calls for reform for so long that we sued: The Alliance joined as an organizational plaintiff in a lawsuit, Scott v. Louisville.

Our demand is simple: End LMPD’s use of indiscriminate force at protests so that the people of Louisville can safely make themselves heard as we continue to fight for change within and without LMPD and begin the difficult work of healing.

After the DOJ came to town to report its findings, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced his intent to listen and to work with Washington to bring about change. He acknowledged that the DOJ’s report “paints a very painful picture of our past.” We tried to be optimistic about his goals, and were open to settling our lawsuit. But so far, Mayor Greenberg has chosen instead to join his predecessor in fighting to keep tear gas in LMPD’s hands. The City has spent nearly a million dollars defending their ability to use force against crowds of peaceful protesters just for exercising their right to speak out — the exact use of force that the Department of Justice found violated the First and Fourth Amendments and for which a jury in Colorado awarded 12 protesters $14 million for their suffering.

If Mayor Greenberg wants us to move forward as a community empty words are not enough. We cannot continue to wait for meaningful change. Mayor Greenberg must meet us at the negotiating table and start centering the demands of the people of Louisville.

Mayor Greenberg, when will you listen to us?

Image from body camera worn by officers approaching scene of mass shooting. (Screenshot)

Louisville police on Tuesday afternoon released footage from body cameras worn by the two officers who arrived first at a mass shooting scene and who were both wounded by the gunman.?

Rookie Officer Nickolas Wilt, who was shot in the head, is in critical condition.?

After Wilt was hit while approaching the building, his training officer, Cory Galloway, who was grazed by a bullet, briefly took cover behind a concrete planter before shooting and killing the gunman.

Wilt was rescued by officers and transported in a police car to the University of Louisville hospital, said Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey, who narrated the video.?

Humphrey said officers could not see the shooter as they approached from the street but he could see them from inside the foyer of the building in the 300 block of Main Street that houses Old National Bank. The shooter was an employee of the bank.

Humphrey said that after attacking his coworkers with an AR-15 rifle, the shooter set up an “ambush” and lay in wait in the lobby for police.?

Five victims have died; three remained hospitalized yesterday.

Humphrey explained it was impossible for officers to see the shooter as they approached because of the building’s elevation above street level, two sets of doors and and type of glass.

Humphrey praised Wilt and Galloway for staying in the line of fire. “There’s only a few people in this country who can do what they did, not everybody can do that.” And he praised all the first responders who “go in before we can say it’s safe.”?

He said Wilt’s and Galloway’s quick response and the actions of other officers who provided medical treatment saved lives.??

He also called for extending care and compassion to the families of the victims and also to officers who are physically and emotionally hurting.

“The most heroic things at the peak of our career that we do are shrouded in other people’s tragedies.”

Police also released video taken by a bystander from across the street. ?None of the footage played during a news briefing shows victims or beyond the bank’s lobby and its shattered glass.

Humphrey said the video and officer personnel files would be posted on Louisville Metro Police Department social media accounts.