LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg (D) and the city’s current top cop, Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, announced access to information about dozens of cases and documents within the department. It’s information they believe was referenced in the U.S. Department of Justice report earlier this year.
Earlier this year, the DOJ laid out their findings from a sweeping probe into several past years at Louisville Metro Police Department. It found Louisville police engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights, following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.
“We don’t believe that any city who has been presented with a findings report by the DOJ has done something like this before. Trying to make it user-friendly so that even notwithstanding the vast amount of information that is here, individuals who want to know more can learn more. We are airing on the side of transparency here,” Mayor Greenberg said Friday.
The city made public new information online on 62 incidents referenced in the DOJ report. The information includes arrest citations, formal investigation information and information on officers involved.
“Not all of these officers identified in these incident reports still work for LMPD. It’s also very important to recognize that just because particular officers are listed as being at the scene when an incident of possible misconduct took place. It doesn’t’ mean when every officer was involved or even fully aware of what was happening at the scene,” Mayor Greenberg said.
Louisville Metro Police Interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel explained, “We have stated from the beginning, that we want the community to understand and to know that we are an LMPD that we want you to be proud of as we move forward in this movement of keeping our community safe.”
Antonio Brown was in the audience. Spectrum News 1 asked him what he thought about the announcement.
“A whole lot of nothing, to be quite honest. We need to hold these officers accountable. This is sad that we are talking about something that’s been going on. This report…since when the report was…how far back they even looked into this report. That’s the sad thing about it. We’re dealing with the same officers that’s still on the same force,” Brown explained.
Nancy Cavalcante was there too.
“I want to be hopeful. I want to be optimistic, but there’s nothing that I’ve seen a significant enough change to say that it’s going to be different,” she said.
One thing not on the website are videos of the incidents. LMPD said because some videos last an hour or longer, it takes time for someone to go through the videos and redact them. Greenberg has asked the videos to be finished in not more than 60 days. LMPD says it will add video links when they are completed.