LOUISVILLE, Ky. — On Wednesday, activists in Louisville held a press conference at Jefferson Square Park because they want to have a community conversation with Mayor Greg Fischer and Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) Chief Erika Shields.

Rhonda Mathies on Wednesday said she attended the 2014 Community Conversation event that covered several topics and included Fischer and then LMPD Chief Steve Conrad in the conversation.

“And now, again in 2021, we are still seeing police brutality,” Mathies said.

As an example, Mathies brought up Dee Garrett who was punched multiple times in the face by an LMPD officer during his arrest on April 18.

Police reform is just one of the issues that some activists in Louisville would like to talk about with Fischer and Shields directly, which is why on Wednesday, they gathered at Jefferson Square Park for a press conference calling for a “community conversation” like the one held in 2014.

“There’s just a lot of confusion going on. There’s a lot of misunderstanding, and the only way to heal that, the only way to get to an understanding, is to converse, is to speak,” said Maxwell Mitchell, a well-known livestreamer of the protests in Louisville.

Breonna Taylor’s aunt, Bianca Austin, also spoke and said she would like to address Shields.

“It’s just breathtaking how you don’t reach out to your community, and we’re down here crying for help; crying for justice. It just shouldn’t take us to have a press conference for our chief of police to come out and greet the people,” Austin said. 

Austin, along with others who spoke Wednesday, wants the city to allow Breonna Taylor’s memorial to remain at Jefferson Square Park indefinitely with no curfew times in place for when the memorial can be displayed. 

“It’s a memorial. It ought to stay in place just like George Floyd’s or anybody else’s memorial. It should go untouched,” said Louisville activist AuDrea Anderson.

They also want a say in how Taylor should be memorialized by the city at Jefferson Square Park.

“We must represent Breonna and Louisville, Kentucky, just as artists have across the world. There are so many examples of how this could be done in a very beautiful and exceptional way. One person suggested a mosaic, which reminded me of John Lennon‘s Imagine memorial in New York City’s Central Park,” said Aron Conaway, a Louisville artist who painted a portrait of Breonna Taylor that has been a prominent piece of her memorial at Jefferson Square Park.

There is also a call for the names of two protest leaders killed last year to be added to a plaque the city is planning to place at the square, which will mark the significance of the protests. Travis Nagdy died during a fatal carjacking in November 2020 and Kris Smith was fatally shot in December 2020. Nagdy’s sister, Sarah Nagdy, said their names not being included on the plaque is disrespectful.

“And to find out that the city that we are part of, that we grew up in, that we claimed and stuff, is not going to memorialize him, it’s just wrong, to be honest,” she said.

Other topics during the event included reparations for Black people in Louisville, dropping arrest charges for protesters and ending qualified immunity for police officers.

“We know that the problems with LMPD run very deep, and we knew that Chief Shields could not fix that by herself, and she cannot fix it by ignoring us. She cannot fix it by sending other people to talk to us. They have to be willing to sit down and have a conversation,” said Shameka Parrish-Wright, who is running for Louisville mayor next year.

Spectrum News reached out to LMPD Wednesday for comment but did not hear back.

In an emailed statement, Jean Porter, a spokesperson from Mayor Fischer’s office, wrote regarding the press conference at Jefferson Square Park:

“The mayor is in conversation with the community every day. He and his team speak regularly with the media and answer media questions, including those from live streamers. And representatives from LMPD and the city’s Office for Community Building meet regularly with protesters. All of those conversations are helping inform our work to build equity and reimagine public safety – and that’s the mayor’s focus.”