With spotlight on Louisville policing, community trust must be LMPD chief’s priority | Editorial

Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel’s top priority as the new chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department must be to build community trust. Through her actions and the actions of her officers, the community has to see tangible reasons to have confidence in her and her vision for Louisville.

After Chief Gwinn-Villaroel spoke with The Courier Journal on July 28, the Editorial Board sat down with leaders from the Louisville Branch NAACP, ACLU of Kentucky and Louisville Urban League to talk about it. Unfortunately, they all agree that Mayor Craig Greenberg did not help the city feel confident about his hiring process when choosing Chief Gwinn-Villaroel. Because of Greenberg's secretive search, the community could not focus on who would fill the important role as Louisville’s next police chief, these leaders said.

Mayor Greenberg’s police chief selection process left out the community. He must acknowledge that for Louisville to move forward

So now the question becomes how does Chief Gwinn-Villaroel divorce herself from the process that named her Louisville’s permanent police chief so she can accomplish the work that needs to be done for our community?

Urban League interim president Lyndon E. Pryor believes that acknowledgement is step one. Acknowledge that the hiring process was bad and also acknowledge that there's an institutional policing problem. “Honestly, just saying that would go a heck of a long way,” he said.

Amber Duke, Executive Director of the ACLU agrees. She said "collectively there's a community trauma that needs to be healed." It's generational and the Department of Justice report confirmed what this community has been saying for a long time.

Breonna Taylor's murder helped shine a light on Louisville's policing issues in a way that made LMPD misconduct hard to deny.

Change should not have to happen one death at a time.

Pryor believes that if Mayor Greenberg and Chief Gwinn-Villaroel could just bring themselves “to acknowledge the fact that the institution has failed... It would allow people to say, at least you’re not telling me I'm crazy because that essentially is what it has felt like for decades.”

Police union contract can improve trust – or be deal breaker

The River City Fraternal Order of Police is the union representing Louisville police officers whose contract expired on June 30. The Courier Journal along with the community are watching and waiting for the forthcoming FOP contract which once again is being privately negotiated and running late.

The new contract must keep the community front of mind and work to appropriately discipline officer misconduct instead of creating hurdles that only serve to protect bad actors on the force. Though the contract states there's an 180 day limit on investigations, in practice, these can drag on for much longer. Investigations must happen more quickly and efficiently for everyone involved. The contract should also rework provisions that discourage complaints in the first place, like requiring civilians to submit sworn affidavits as part of the grievance process. These concerns have been voiced repeatedly and if they are left unheard or acted upon, they undermine community confidence.

NAACP President Raoul Cunningham said the contract “can bring about trust or can be a deal breaker where there is no trust.”

The mayor and chief’s defensiveness of the officers shows in word choices made when speaking about the Department of Justice report. Both consistently speak of the DOJ report and reference the misconduct of “some” in LMPD. This wording is frustrating because it offers a “bad apples” sentiment for behavior that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called a "pattern or practice.” Those are contradictory perspectives, and it seems that the chief and the mayor's thinking are in alignment that “some" in LMPD have fallen short.

How do we move forward as a community when this kind of defensive language seems to dig in and protect instead of acknowledge and accept responsibility?

Gwinn-Villaroel, Greenberg must work together with united message

If Chief Gwinn-Villaroel’s objective is to work on public trust, but Mayor Greenberg isn't able to live up to his promises of transparency and then the FOP delivers a completely different message, it only demonstrates chaos.  It undermines any and all of Chief Gwinn-Villaroel’s work and ambitious intentions.

“The hard thing always is you can say the value, you can state the wish, you can state the dream, but how do you operationalize that into reality?” Duke asked.

The community does see some good effort from Chief Gwinn-Villaroel. She’s showing up to talk with the community even if some of those communications are guarded and less forth-coming as the community would like. She has a standing meeting with the ACLU, has met with the NAACP and is making herself available for conversations in community at special events.

So, where does Louisville policing go from here?

“We wish her the best,” said Cunningham of Chief Gwinn-Villaroel. “We will continue to try to work with her. I think she deserves cooperation. She deserves us to be supportive wherever we can.”

For Chief Gwinn-Villaroel to truly help heal some of the community's trauma and rebuild its trust - especially in the Black community - she must continue talking to people, remain open and understand that she is starting from scratch when it comes to public trust. The road ahead is going to be hard; it is going to require consistency, and Chief Gwinn-Villaroel and Mayor Greenberg must understand that the community perceives them as a team and what one does directly impacts the perception of them both.

The Courier Journal Editorial Board. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp is the Opinion Editor and can be reached at BFeldkamp@Gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville police have trust problem. How LMPD chief can help fix that