LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Louisville Metro Police Chief Paul Humphrey came by WDRB on Thursday to discuss a decline in homicides in 2025, a new push to solve cold cases and what can be done to stop crimes before they happened. A full transcription of the interview can be found below, and the video of the interview is above.
Q: “Let’s start with the Whedah case. I mean, it really concerned the public. This is a jail officer, an actual officer. He had gone home. His family went out then they didn’t hear from him and he winds up dead in an alley. What can you tell us about the connection between the suspects here and the victim in this case?”
Humphrey: “Well, right now, we’re still working on that prosecution. So a lot of those details will be reserved for court when we have to prosecute this case. But what I can say is that those homicide detectives working that case worked it diligently and tirelessly. They did an outstanding job, and I’m glad that we have the ability to bring some closure to the family and let the community know that these two suspects involved in this heinous crime are off the street.”
Q: “Can you tell us any more information about how they were known to each other? Did it tie back to an incident at the jail or anything like that?”
Humphrey: “Well, I don’t even know those those things. I can tell you that I do know that it’s not related to anything related to his employment at the jail. So this has nothing to do with his status as a corrections officer.”
Q: “Nonetheless, last week, you shared some numbers about the decline in homicides in the city compared to last year. We’re sitting at about 23 homicides in Louisville right now. That’s down 16 from last March. But I want to talk about the unsolved cases. Last year, I did reporting showing that more than 400 unsolved homicides in Louisville, looking back over the last five years. And the data is telling us that if you kill someone in this city, you have better than 50% chance of never being arrested. So whether it’s terminations, resignations, reassignments or retirements, it’s all kind of hit the police department and the homicide unit. Victims families are telling us that their loved ones cases have been bounced from bounced from detective to detective and that they’re falling through the cracks. What would you say to those family?”
Humphrey: “So I wouldn’t say that any case falls through the cracks. I will say that I’m not satisfied with the number of cases that we’ve solved. We pride ourselves in being able to take care of those victims and the victims’ families, and those detectives are working their tail off. As everybody knows, our homicide rate did go up significantly, and we are fortunate that we’re in a situation right now where it is back down to pre-2020 levels. And our job now, related to that, is to make sure that we take the extra time that we have, by not having the higher murder rate, to put in that extra amount of time. Because we have to divide time between all those cases. And so the more time we can put in on those cases, the more likely we are to solve those cases. But the other part of it is that we have to make sure that officers are out there on the street doing that difficult work to disrupt crime before it happens. So we need officers out there doing that difficult, dangerous work to protect the community and get people off the street before they commit that that heinous, violent crime of a homicide.”
Q: “So is there anything that can give those families who have been waiting for years hope? Maybe the fact that there are fewer homicide cases coming in gives officers more time to look back into the wayback machine and and focus on all those old cases? Is there any hope that those cases stand a chance of being solved?”
Humphrey: “I absolutely believe that. Homicide cases don’t salt get solved overnight. And you can obviously see that we had a lot of information in the Officer Whedah case very early on, and it still took us several weeks in order to make an arrest on that case. But the other thing is I will say one of the things that we have done to deal with those cold cases is that we are going through a process of reviewing all of the cold cases with new detectives for fresh evidence to put a new set of eyes on it, and, hopefully, we can bring some justice some of those cases that we may have overlooked something in the past. And so we are feel pretty confident that we’re going to be able to solve some of those cases from the past that maybe we missed something previously.”
Q: “Perhaps more eyes would help. We’ve talked about several times about recruitment. LMPD is down anywhere from 200 to 300 officers, depending on who you ask and at that point in time. I want to focus on the academy, because only 10 graduates came out of that last class a couple of weeks ago. Nine in the class before that in August. Now there’s room for about 45 in each cadet class, correct? So is the cadet class not being filled and then are we not graduating those folks? What’s going on there?
Humphrey: “I think we have a combination of things at work here. The profession itself has seen a drop in applicants across the board, just as we’ve seen in Louisville. And I think workforce dynamics with this generation have changed. And so you see a lot of employers that are facing the same things. And so it’s our job to adjust to the new workforce dynamics and make sure that we are reaching recruits where they are as opposed to assuming that somebody like me, who’s been on for all almost 20 years, what attracted me is going to be the same thing that attracts a 22-year-old today. That’s just asinine. And so if we keep trying those same old techniques to get people through the door — this is an absolutely amazing job. And I think, to some extent, we’ve shifted too far in getting away from the excitement and the fun that this job is. This is a service job. We get opportunities to get down on one knee with a little kid, play basketball on the street. But we also get to chase bad guys with guns and jump fences and stuff. This is absolutely awesome. You don’t get to do this anywhere else, and I think that’s part of the job that we need to talk about a little bit more, that brings people in. That’s what people want to do. And so it’s an exciting job with with great benefits, and our applications are up. Our number of qualified applicants aren’t necessarily. But I feel pretty good about the direction of this next class from talking to our recruitment sergeants.”
Q: “Do you think it’ll be filled? You’ll have that 45 in there?”
Humphrey: “I don’t think we’re going to get to that … that is where we want to get to and that is our ultimate goal — to fill three full classes a year of 48. We will celebrate the day we get there but we’re going to celebrate every recruit that comes through that door.”
Q: “All right, we know there’s a gang problem in the city of Louisville. Are you making any headway? You’ve talked at times before when you visited us some different techniques that you’re using to intercede with crime beforehand and working with some federal partners. Are you making any headway with gangs in the city?”
Humphrey: “I believe we are. And one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve done a really good job of some of our long-term investigations. You’ve seen those federal indictments over the past couple of years go up, and that goes to show you that cooperation that we’ve had with the federal agencies as well as the the level of work that our detectives are doing here at LMPD. But one of the things I’ve asked them to do is shift their focus away from catching people after they’ve committed a heinous, heinous crime and going out there and disrupting crime before it happens. So make that traffic stop that leads to that gun, jump out on that corner where you see people hanging out and doing things that are suspicious that might lead to crime later. Disrupt that before it happens. And I think that’s been our missing gap, because we’ve done the mid-term and the long-term investigations really well. We’re going to have to go out there and do some of that short-term, in-your-face, get-out-and-disrupt-crime-before-it-happens type of work a little bit better.”
Q: “Are you following the data on that? Because we’ve seen how the police department has tried to do advance work and interrupt crime in advance and then wound up treating citizens like suspects just because of the car they drive or where they’re at.”
Humphrey: “And that’s that’s part of what the conversation that we’re having internally is that we’re not going out here and saying ‘OK, this neighborhood’s had a problem. Let’s saturate this neighborhood.’ No, what we’re doing is we’re saying we know that these groups exist. We know that these are some of the people in these groups. Go and target those people in these groups and get out there and intercept them before they commit that crime as opposed to disrupting an entire neighborhood. That is not what we’re here to do. We want to make sure that we police for the people in those neighborhoods, not police the people in those neighborhoods.”
