I have been doing this job for a long time now. I have seen the good times and bad. In my line of work we see mostly the bad. We see the victims of crime in the results of criminal activity. Recent news stories have been published regarding the FBI annual crime reports for 2005. As the title suggests the crime rate in Louisville is far outpacing the national average. The good news is our murder rate is down, so far. Having worked as a homicide detective and in some really rough areas of town I know that homicides don't follow the trends. Very few are planned, some are drug-related, some are domestic violence related and some are just spontaneous acts. You cannot predict a murder. There really is not much anyone can do to prevent one either. We actually went down in homicides last year. It was truly good news. We also went down in forcible rapes as well. I was curious to see just how much, so I went to this link, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/2005preliminary/05table4.htm and found out for myself. According to FBI statistics we had nine fewer murders in 2005 than we did in 2004. We had seven fewer forcible rapes. Neither number is acceptable! Why the difference? Are our criminal was more savvy? I don't think so. I think that if you ask any COP on the street they will tell you that it is most likely because we are short handed. We currently have 82 people in training to become police officers. There's been a recent surge in hiring for the Louisville Metro Police Department; coincidentally it's an election-year. For the past three years we have been running anywhere from 75 to 120 officers short on the street. I look forward to when these 82 people can hit the street, but unlike some folks, I don't count them in our members yet because they are in training and they're not yet patrolling our neighborhoods. We need to up our strength and continue to hire on this accelerated basis for years to come, not just when it will be part of a political platform! Officers retire all year round. August is generally the month that most officers retire in, but in May of this year we an unusual amount of officers retire because if they retired before the end of that month, in June they would received a 3.4% annual pay raise on their retirement salary. It was a no-brainer for most officers that were eligible to retire when they knew in July we would get a 2% pay raise. This August we anticipate we will still have our usual number of officers retire, leaving us further short handed. While crime rates have gone up the number of officers on the street has gone down. The last time our manpower allocation was raised was over 10 years ago! Going back to the statistics you will see that there were 346 more robberies in 2005 and the in 2004. There were 277 more burglaries for the same time period, there were 859 more thefts reported and 128 more people had their vehicles stolen. Talk to any Robbery Detective and they will tell you that the 2006 figures will far outpace anything we have seen previews years. It has been a banner year for armed robberies. The Louisville Metro Police Department has done an admirable job on trying to get citizens involved in helping out. People are asked to help report crime by calling 574 LMPD, where all callers remain anonymous. While this has been helpful it is still not enough. It takes police officers patrolling the streets and detectives following up on the crimes reported in order to solve these crimes and put these criminals behind bars where they belong, but we don't have enough of either Beat Officers or Detectives. Louisville Metro Government needs to take a really hard look at our numbers. Not just crime numbers but the number of officers we had to respond to citizens complaints. There's nothing more frustrating than to hear our dispatchers report that we are holding a large number of runs because we don't have officers to respond. It's frustrating for the patrol officers and citizens of Metro Louisville. In 2004 the Officer's and Sergeant's contract gave the officers a 0% raise, a 2% raise for 2005 and a 2% raise for 2006. Metro Council member Kelly Downard says our police force could be more effective if morale were to improve. "The morale in our police department is as low as I've ever seen it and I've known those people for many years." Police officers aren't going to stay around for pitiful raises. They have families, mortgages and bills to pay just like everyone else. When Metro Government spends money on parks, arenas and other frivolous projects and then turns around and tells all their employees, not just the police that there's no money for raises, people will go elsewhere. The firefighters are still working without a contract. The police will have contract negotiations start in 10 more months. At some point Metro Government will have to decide what is more important; the safety of the citizens of Louisville or the pork barrel projects of special-interest groups.
City State Year Violent Crime Murder
Rape Robbery Agg. Assault Property Crime Burglary Larceny- Theft Auto Theft Arson
Louisville KY 2004 3,280 66 216 1,476 1,522 26,182 6,869 16,291 3,022
2005 3,896 55 209 1,822 1,810 27,446 7,146 17,150 3,150 281
Lexington KY 2004 1,306 24 140 574 568 10,204 2,224 7,207 773 30
2005 1,476 15 147 575 739 10,308 2,172 7,391 745 22
Indianapolis IN 2004 7,067 109 479 2,763 3,716 46,998 10,920 28,364 7,714 441
2005 7,948 108 527 3,274 4,039 50,081 11,548 29,541 8,992 374
Dayton OH 2004 1,632 32 127 914 559 12,787 3,693 6,656 2,438 185
2005 1,533 32 140 851 510 11,466 3,228 6,027 2,211 143
Cincinnati OH 2004 3,668 64 318 2,409 877 22,796 5,583 14,342 2,871 249
2005 3,719 79 311 2,320 1,009 22,366 5,425 13,993 2,948 240