NBC News is now officially describing Louisville, Kentucky as “a city under siege.” They are referring to the city’s 125 homicides as of today, nearly all of them as the result of gunfire and gang violence. They are on track to eclipse the modern record they previously set last year. And compounding the problem is that well over half of the murders remain unsolved. It’s a closure rate that is dismal compared to some fairly recent years. This situation has the public, the city government, and the police all unhappy, though perhaps for different reasons.
Homicides — particularly deadly shootings — have piled up with no clear end in sight.
The city had reported 125 homicides as of Sunday and is in danger of breaking its homicide record for a second consecutive year. Roughly 65 percent of this year’s killings have gone unsolved, a sharp change from just three years ago when about 39 percent of killings were not resolved.
Louisville’s current 34 percent solve rate falls far short of the 61.4 percent national average in 2019, the last year for which FBI data is available.
The 61 percent homicide solve rate is barely half of what they managed only two years ago. Yes, it’s true that there are more shootings and more dead bodies, so the workload is higher. But that’s still not a very good record.
Some in the city are not blaming this situation on the fact that there are more cases to crack. The Mayor places at least partial blame on the police, saying that they are “reluctant to carry out their duties because of increased scrutiny.” He is, of course, referring to the investigations following the police shooting of Breonna Taylor.
Choosing the phrase “increased scrutiny” is rather odd, considering that most of the “scrutiny” was coming from the Mayor and the City Council because they were trying to figure out how to quiet the rioting mobs that were tearing up the streets for the past year. There has been a dog pile taking place, with everyone seeming to blame all of the city’s ills on the cops.
At the same time, the Mayor points out that they have significantly increased the funding for recruiting new police officers. But who wants to come to work in a department where the municipal government constantly throws you under the bus and encourages the public to blame you? Lest the Mayor forget, the reason they need to recruit new officers is that so many cops have taken early retirement or simply quit.
Police Chief Erika Shields has previously said that she needs her police officers to feel more confident.
“It’s getting officers to feeling confident and knowing they can be proactive. I need them to be proactive. I need them to be making arrests,”
In most cases, it sounds as if the Louisville PD isn’t suffering from a lack of confidence. They’re going through a period of very low morale. And if they know that a situation calling for use of force or even deadly force will immediately be assumed to be malfeasance on the part of the police rather than the suspect, the motivation to go out there and charge after the bad guys is likely diminished. Sadly, Louisville is hardly alone in this boat. Large metropolitan police departments across the nation are dealing with the same thing. And it’s unfortunately turned into a golden opportunity for trigger men and gang bangers.
