Rehiring LMPD Officers

First you have to ask - why is Louisville NOT attracting qualified applicants? One reason is the lengthy delay in hiring because you have to wait to hire enough people to make up a class. If you could hire, instead, 5 at a time and send them to Richmond, throughout the year, you wouldn't keep "slipping the hook" on good applicants who decide to go elsewhere when they find out how long it takes to even get hired by LMPD.

Do you really think that, for example, the new officers hired by Shively aren't as "good" as those hired by Louisville? You can get vetted, hired and trained, and literally be out riding solo faster virtually everywhere in Kentucky than you can even get word from Louisville that you ARE hired. And how is policing for Shively so very different than policing for LMPD? It's the same place, right, at least according to Abramson. Remember, Grignon got killed just a few blocks from the Shively city limits, after all, by a little thug from Portland, quite some distance from where he committed his murder. And given that Audubon Park regularly polices its own borders, the responsibility of Louisville Metro, again, how is it different?

The only reall difference in policing for LMPD is that you have LESS responsibility than officers in most other places in the state, who don't turn over everything to the detectives, they actually do their own crime scene investigation, their own interviews, everything. In a lot of ways, they are a lot more rounded officers than a LMPD officer who has only ridden a beat for years. (Not saying they aren't capable of it, just that it is all they've been allowed to do.) I've heard more than one retired LMPD officer, now policing somewhere else in Kentucky, remark in amazement that they now get to really work cases, for the first time in their lives, and do some "real policing" - not just write tickets and make out reports, and how they've had to learn a whole new set of skills.

You know, you guys have zero clue about Richmond's facility, and apparently about the state as a whole. When is the last time you actually LEFT Jefferson County's borders to visit another city of any size? (I don't count going to Rough River. ) How about making a trip there and actually SEEING the facility and the curriculum? Don't think cow wrangling is on the curriculum. If you think that Louisville is so different from Florence - Covington - Newport - Shively - J-town - Bowling Green, etc., you are really, really naive. Last time I checked, none of them have as many cows inside the city limits as Louisville had at the stockyards.

I get so tired of people complaining about all the money they "give" to the state and get nothing in return, when they simply refuse to take advantage of what they are already paying for. Might be time to actually explain to the Metro Council that our taxpayers are paying double for police training. I'll bet that is the best kept secret - and one that the police department does NOT want the council to know about, because they may actually start asking that question.

Won't really help recruiting, other than to get the workd out that LMPD no longer considers itself "too good" to associate with anyone else in the state - which is the general consensus. Louisville considers itself something so different from the rest of the state, might be good for officers to find out how LE works in the rest of the state. Try being stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a nutcase with a rifle sniping at you, iffy communications and backup 20 miles - or more - away? That's real law enforcement, folks. You think gangbangers and drug addicts are limited to Louisville? How about 300 plus active meth labs in a single year - and all the paranoid meth junkies they produce - talk to Daviess County. Illegal pharmaceutical sales, such as Oxy - and the killins' that go with that - Perry County/Hazard - with SIX deputies to police the entire county outside ot Hazard? It's big news in Louisville to get ONE lab in a residential area in a month, how about taking down one a day?

And it WILL help with your patrol numbers, since you can get some of those folks in training back out on the streets.

A couple of points. As a graduate of parochial schools I can tell you that you have your head in the sand if you think there are no thugs in private schools. The other point would be that as a lateral from out in the state I can tell you first hand the majority of LMPD Officers could use a little training in the art of "cows in the road". We are spoiled/lucky to have so many people and units in this department. I suggest if more people here had to deal with people and situations by themselves in the middle of B.F. Egypt they would appreciate that "cow training".