Legislature must reform police so officers can earn trust, Louisville leader says
Police departments must work to earn the trust of black Kentuckians following decades of abuse, including the recent high-profile deaths of several black people at the hands of officers, Louisville Metro Council President David James told state lawmakers Thursday.
James — a former Louisville police detective — proposed several statutory reforms to the legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on the Judiciary, following a week of civil rights protests in the streets of Louisville, Lexington and other cities nationwide.
Police departments should be overseen by independent review boards that have the authority to subpoena witnesses and records, James said. And there should be “severe” limits enacted statewide on no-knock warrants that authorize police to burst into a home in order to surprise the residents, he said.
“They’re dangerous,” James said. “They are dangerous for police officers and they are dangerous for citizens. I believe they should be used in only the most extreme circumstances to protect life.”
Louisville police serving a no-knock warrant on March 13 shot and killed Breonna Taylor, 26, in her own apartment. Taylor, who was unarmed, had been EMT-certified and was working for area hospitals during the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Breonna Taylor joined of long list of other black people killed by active-duty or retired police, James said, including — just to name a recent few — Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and George Floyd in Minnesota. Then, during Louisville protests over police violence, an exchange of gun fire that included police and National Guard members resulted in the shooting death of another black man, David McAtee, the popular owner of Yaya’s BBQ, James said.
“That has caused a degradation of the public’s trust in government and the police department,” James said.
“I call it the lack of deposits of credibility and legitimacy. When something like (Taylor’s killing) happens, you need to be able to draw from this account. But they weren’t able to draw from this account. And so we find ourselves where we are now,” he said. “The community has erupted in protest.”
Lawmakers asked no questions Thursday.
“We are not going to comment or make statements,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Whitney Westerfield, R-Crofton, said at the start of the hearing. “I’ll save that for each of you in your own district in your own way and in your own time. This is a time for us to listen. We need to hear what needs to be said.”
The General Assembly has ignored past calls for police reforms. For instance, a 2018 House bill sponsored by several black lawmakers from Louisville would have created public review boards to investigate officer-involved shootings. It never received a hearing from the House Judiciary Committee.
Another witness on Thursday, activist Keturah Herron, told the legislative committee that bills sponsored by black lawmakers in Frankfort seldom seem to get heard, much less passed into law. As an example, Herron cited bills filed by state Rep. Attica Scott, D-Louisville, that would have banned discrimination against African-American hair styles. The bills have died for lack of action.
“That was a simple bill, I felt like, to make sure that black folks and folks of color did not get discriminated against because of their hair. That bill did not get heard. To me, that’s blatant disrespect, and that’s where we’ve seen the racism and the white supremacy,” said Herron, a member of Black Lives Matter who lobbies at the Capitol for the ACLU of Kentucky.
Herron also criticized members of the legislature present Thursday who associated with the shutdown protesters who hung Gov. Andy Beshear in effigy outside the Capitol last month. As a black woman, she said, she was physically repulsed by the image of the dummy with the governor’s face hanging from a tree, like a lynching victim.
“It was what the effigy stands for, it was what and who, historically, has been hung from trees,” Herron told the committee. “Another thing that was hurtful was that these same groups of people we saw previously, some folks who are in this room, they stood with that group of people. Whether you say you were aware of the things they stood for or not, it’s a smack in the face for me as a black woman walking these halls.”
State Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge, who attended Thursday’s committee hearing, was not present at the effigy hanging, and she later issued a statement condemning “all acts of hatred in the context of political discourse.” But Maddox has been criticized for speaking at a previous shutdown rally outside the Capitol and posing with one of the hanging participants.
