Louisville forms task force to put most dangerous criminals behind bars. Will it work?

On the last day of January, multiple people were shot in broad daylight on a crowded street in Louisville's Russell neighborhood. Two people died while two others suffered critical injuries.

In early March, Louisville saw five fatal shootings in less than 24 hours, one of which occurring inside a crowded Highlands bar . Five people in total were killed.

Eight shootings over Mother's Day weekend in May left five dead and six others injured. And on the afternoon of July 3, two men were injured by gunshots fired near the parking lot of Bates Memorial Baptist Church as people were leaving a funeral procession.

To city officials, these high-profile incidents offer only a glimpse into the totality of Louisville's gun violence, which Mayor Craig Greenberg has described as an "epidemic that's plaguing our city right now and far too many other cities around the country."

The common denominator among the tragedy, law enforcement leaders say: a small group of repeat offenders who are evading lengthy prison sentences.

Now, several public agencies are teaming up to identify people they say are responsible for much of the violence and get them behind bars.

“We should not be measuring the sentence of violent gun crime offenders in months; we should be measuring in years,” Greenberg said.

In January, the agencies formed a task force, known as the Prohibited Firearms Possessor Initiative , which is bringing together police and prosecutors from the local, state and federal levels.

Task force members say the initiative will help them focus greater attention on criminally charged offenders they say pose a greater threat to the community.

But some familiar with the criminal justice system have voiced concerned with the group's work — saying more effort should be spent addressing the root causes of gun violence and strengthening gun regulations.

"As long as you keep putting guns in circulation, there'll be people who will keep using them," said Charlie Cunningham, a retired Jefferson Circuit judge with nearly 15 years of experience. "And if you really think that if we could just get another 1,000 people put in prison, the violence would go away, then you're really not paying attention.”

Shameka Parrish-Wright, a Metro Council member who advocates against mass incarceration, thinks the task force could potentially fulfill its mission — as long as it doesn't repeat the mistakes of previous initiatives.

“I think fundamentally the city has done the same thing over and over again, and every administration just gives it a new name,” Parrish-Wright said. “What I want to see is the real application of this.”

Task force spurred by 'small group' of offenders driving gun violence

So far this year, approximately 80 homicides in Louisville have been caused by fatal gunshot wounds, according to city data .

When that scope is widened to non-fatal shootings, the number of victims balloons. Within the first six months of 2024, around 200 people were shot but survived.

Louisville Metro Police spokesperson John Bradley said department analysis indicates "a lot of the gun violence in our city can be tied to a small group of repeat offenders," a belief that's echoed by Greenberg and several prosecutors.

Prosecutor Mark Barry was hired within the Jefferson County Attorney's Office to handle gun-related cases and said he has seen some of the same names pop up, though they can often appear as both perpetrator and victim.

“Violence tends to perpetuate, and so people who might be involved in a shooting one day might be a victim in a case another day,” he said.

At the Jefferson County Commonwealth Attorney's Office, a violent crime unit is made up of six well-seasoned prosecutors who each handle 50 to 100 cases at any given time, including defendants with lengthy histories of gun violence.

“You see the numbers that we have as far as cases and people,” Commonwealth Attorney Gerina Whethers said. “And the only way we're going to be somewhat successful is we’ve got to hone in on certain ones that we need to get off the street.”

To crack down on repeat offenders, the two attorneys offices are partnering with LMPD and other agencies for the new task force, which meets monthly to discuss key cases.

Task force members include representatives from LMPD, the Jefferson County attorney and commonwealth attorney offices, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky’s Office and Louisville's field division of the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Aside from the labor hours of already on staff employees, the task force does not create any cost to Louisville Metro, Greenberg press secretary Kevin Trager said.

According to Bradley, the team reviews all arrests where a firearm is recovered and identifies those who are already prohibited from possessing a gun. Cases that appear to be outliers or to involve people seen as posing a greater direct threat to the community are elevated to a higher level of scrutiny, he said.

“All convicted felons are prevented from owning firearms, but from a public safety perspective, we are more concerned specifically about trigger-pullers who are the drivers of violence in our community,” Bradley said. “The initiative assists with the goal of successfully prosecuting the most dangerous individuals.”

Priority arrests are flagged by police to Louisville prosecutors in both district and circuit court, with police able to give prosecutors more information about a defendant's criminal history beyond what is written in their record at an earlier point in the judicial process, so prosecutors are better equipped and informed at court proceedings.

Barry said the extra collaboration with law enforcement can help the Jefferson County Attorney's Office make bond amount decisions and determine what prosecutors should advocate for during early appearances in front of a judge.

While prosecutors and police often talk to one another about cases anyway, Elizabeth Jones Brown — who leads the violent crime unit at the commonwealth attorney's office — added the task force makes a notable difference by separating outlier cases from her office’s normal caseload.

The partnership can also potentially lead to grant-funded opportunities to test DNA or firearms to build better evidence in these cases, members said.

The task force’s goal, Bradley said, is to preempt further violent acts by ensuring repeat offenders are fully prosecuted under the law.

Right now, the team is pursuing 42 cases, he said.

The commonwealth attorney’s office declined to identify defendants in those cases, as officials have concerns over protecting their ongoing journey in the legal process.

None of the cases have been resolved so far. But members said they plan to release information on successes as they arise.

In the interim, a seeming lack of transparency has raised alarm for some criminal justice advocates, who say that without proper checks and balances from the community, the initiative could do more harm than good.

Advocates call for better transparency, community input

Metro Councilwoman Parrish-Wright, who also serves as director of the community advocacy organization VOCAL-KY, has seen Louisville's previous attempts to accomplish the task force's same goals , referencing LMPD's now-disbanded Ninth Mobile Unit.

That team involved officers driving unmarked cars who were tasked with getting guns and drugs off the streets of Louisville’s most dangerous neighborhoods. But instead of reducing violence , it became known for exhibiting brutality itself, abusing authority and using dragnet-style policing that deepened distrust in the community.

Parrish-Wright said the new initiative could benefit from bringing people from the community, such as someone with lived experience of gun violence or a violence prevention-trained faith leader, to discussions.

“These task forces or these entities that they pull together to resolve one issue can actually end up making the situation worse and creating more harms if they don't have people who are directly impacted on all levels a part of this decision-making and a part of the process and planning,” she said.

Greenberg said the community does have a crucial role in deterring gun violence with one of the most effective ways being to communicate with authorities if they see violence firsthand.

"We need individuals, when they see people shooting at each other, to share that information with authorities," he said.

Social worker and longtime activist Khalilah Collins said she also fears the task force could lead to more over-policing.

“I’m afraid of more traffic stops based on ‘suspicion’ and more people being harassed by LMPD as a result of this,” she said.

Commonwealth Attorney Whethers understands why there might be some concerns, based on history in the city and country at large.

But she stressed the task force will not profile residents — especially in Louisville's majority Black neighborhoods.

Jones Brown added the task force’s work only begins after an arrest has already been made.

“We're not targeting people,” the prosecutor said. “Like they're not following guys around waiting for them to mess up. They're looking at cases where there's somebody that’s already arrested for a gun.”

Greenberg said the task force’s focus is solely on people who illegally possess guns and use them to commit crimes.

“We're not targeting neighborhoods,” he added. “We're not targeting all types of people based on any characteristic other than individuals who are not permitted to have firearms that are using guns to harm other people.”

There is little doubt, however, that some neighborhoods experience more violence than others, Bradley said.

"In these areas, we have seen a significant portion of the violent crime being committed by a select, repeat group of offenders — and these are the individuals this initiative focuses on,” he said.

Collins, Parrish-Wright and Celine Mutuyemariya, organizing director for Black Leadership Action Coalition of Kentucky, each criticized the task force for not disclosing any updates on cases it's pursuing.

“How dare you not only use outlier cases to justify an over-investment in punishment over prevention, but then also refuse to disclose information about what those outlier cases even are?” Mutuyemariya said.

Collins said the initiative could bring better transparency to its work by releasing regular updates.

“Give me a monthly report. If it's 12 individuals or 12 cases, then I want to know where we are next month with those 12 cases,” Collins said.

Erran Huber, public information officer for the commonwealth attorney's office, said while task force members recognize the community is "eager to see a meaningful change in the level of violence plaguing our city, any collaborative effort like this is one that takes time and effort to bear fruit.

"We look forward to sharing with the public more information about the effectiveness of our initiative in the near future," he added.

Is task force the best way to reduce gun violence?

Collins, the longtime activist, agrees a small number of people are driving the majority of the city's gun violence.

However, at the same time, she added: “I think that what’s driving gun violence in this city is poverty and lack of access to resources, the disenfranchisement.”

Louisville Metro Government has invested in initiatives aimed at preventing gun violence, including through the Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods.

But Collins says spending on those efforts falls far short of money going toward law enforcement. And without eliminating the root causes of gun violence — including improving access to affordable housing, fresh food and community support systems — the city will continually see similar levels and patterns of violence, she added.

“If you find 10 people using guns persistently and driving gun violence ... (and) if you focus only on that, there are 10 people coming up behind those 10 people to replace them once they're off the street,” she said.

It's a line of reasoning echoed by former judge Cunningham, who oversaw felony criminal cases during his time on the bench before he retired in 2022.

"What's motivating so much of this (gun violence) at the end of the day is either some kind of grudge or some kind of turf war for drugs, and you don't simply eliminate those motivations by taking some people out of play. Other people step in to fill the void,” he said.

While Cunningham acknowledges some names appeared in court on a more regular basis than others, he believes greater access to firearms has caused a ramp-up in gun violence. He recalled a time earlier in his career when police said there were known pockets with concentrated gun violence in Louisville.

“Now what I'm hearing is there's no place in Jefferson County that isn't touched by shootings — that if you think it's just a West End problem, if you think it's just a Portland problem, that if you just stayed out of downtown, then you're okay," he said. "No, there's shootings all over. So you can say that just means the ‘bad guys’ are living in other parts of town. I don't think so. I just think it's spreading, in part, because the guns are spreading.”

Solutions are crucial, Cunningham said, but he isn't convinced that longer or more aggressive sentencing is the key.

“There's a lot of people who would like to say it’s an easy, simple solution: ‘If we could just get judges to put these people away for longer periods of time, we would solve the problem.’ And the only thing I will say that causes me concern is that's not really the case," he said, adding, "Judges have managed to fill just about every available bed in every jail or prison in Kentucky. So, you can say we're not doing our job, but the data doesn't support that.”

A study by the Prison Policy Initiative found Kentucky has an incarceration rate of 889 per 100,000 people , meaning about 37,000 people in the state are behind bars. That data shows the Commonwealth locks up a higher percentage of its people than any democratic country on earth, with only five U.S. states ranking higher.

Advocate Mutuyemariya believes an emphasis on incarceration as a primary solution to gun violence is problematic.

“Incarcerating people doesn't actually lead to rehabilitation or safer communities,” she said. “It simply separates families. It separates people from resources. It separates people from the opportunity to heal within the community.”

But many in local law enforcement and the court system argue prosecution of gun-related crimes could serve as vital reminders to perpetrators that they will experience consequences.

“We need there to be deterrents so that other people stop committing violent crimes because they know they will be held accountable," Greenberg said. "Our system must do better in that."

Reach reporter Rachel Smith at rksmith@courierjournal.com or @RachelSmithNews on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville forms task force to put most dangerous criminals behind bars. Will it work?