Mayor Greg Fischer

Opinion contributor



Flashing red and blue lights appear in your rear-view mirror. A police vehicle pulls up behind you and indicates that you need to pull over. Your palms are instantly sweaty.

This is an experience thousands of drivers of all backgrounds have every year all across America. However, the experiences and perspectives of black and white Americans in these moments are very different, a difference that is the product of a long painful history.

Our city and its public servants are determined to face that history, learn from it and work together with citizens to create a stronger, more resilient and equitable community for the future of Louisville.

Recognizing, for example, that a police-community relationship is only legitimate if our citizens see it as legitimate, LMPD is leaning into the task of addressing tensions between police and communities of color, a challenge throughout our country that began long before today’s officers were born.

Like all Louisville Metro government agencies, LMPD is working to address the prejudices many of us carry without even thinking about them – our implicit biases. That’s why metro government is committed to ongoing implicit bias training for all public employees, and why we have policies that forbid unequal treatment based on race, gender, sexual orientation or age.

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LMPD has procedures to review complaints of biased policing and holds officers accountable if they are found to have exhibited bias. Other specific LMPD efforts to strengthen the relationship between our police officers and our community include:

• Issuing body cameras to all patrol officers to ensure transparency and accountability.

• Gathering and analyzing data necessary to pinpoint weaknesses. For example, we have an ongoing partnership with the University of Louisville for an annual vehicle stop study and with the Metro Criminal Justice Commission to study arrest rates, incarceration and court outcomes. All of that data is used to assess and improve the department’s policies and practices.

• Establishing a Community Policing Unit to further build trust between citizens and the police.

• Adopting former President Barack Obama’s 21st Century Policing Initiative, which includes holding community forums to measure performance, and implementing policies resulting from those reviews. This aligns with other police-community programs like the Citizens Commission on Police Accountability, the Citizens Advisory Board for Training, a Youth Advisory Board, an LGBT advisory panel, as well as community advisers in every division.

• Conducting outreach programs like Coffee with a Cop, Chief’s Walks with Chief Conrad, and Peace Walks with officers in neighborhoods throughout the city.

There is much more work to do, of course, and it will require some difficult conversations. I appreciate Rev. Kevin Cosby’s desire to use his own recent encounter with police to highlight that need – as he said this week, to “engage in civil discourse that might result in an empathetic understanding of people whose life experiences may be different from ours.”

Exactly.

Those conversations are necessary because the only way we move forward as a city of 771,000 is by confronting this challenge of race. This is a challenge that both affects and requires the efforts of all Louisvillians – it should not rest solely on the shoulders of communities of color, or the police. We all play a role.

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The cultivation of empathy, of compassion, for one another is vital to overcome the prejudice and racism that have haunted our country for centuries. By engaging in conversation, telling the truth and listening without being defensive, we, as a community, build our social muscles – the bonds that hold us together in difficult times.

And in Louisville, we’ve shown we can do that – we can turn painful moments into opportunities to assert our connection and our common humanity.

In 2015, the Louisville Islamic Center on River Road was vandalized. The next day our community came together to clean and repaint the mosque. It was a gorgeous moment for Louisville – we had hundreds more volunteers with paintbrushes than patches of vandalism.

And in 2016, our city came together again in an unprecedented way, with people of all colors, faiths and ZIP codes lining the streets to say goodbye and thank you to Muhammad Ali, a man who stood, unflinching, against racism and oppression, and who embraced compassion and taught us what it means to seek justice with love.

We have to bring that same mentality to this moment, and this discussion. We have to remember that the ultimate goal is greater trust, respect and healing in our community. Honest dialogue with open minds and open hearts, accompanied by authentic action, is the only way to achieve that.

Cultivating empathy means we must acknowledge the history of injustice that African-Americans have faced in our country as a whole, and particularly in our justice system, from racial profiling to disproportionate rates of arrests, incarceration, sentencing and parole.

It means examining our policies and procedures through the lens of racial equity and fairness, and when we get it wrong, admitting that and committing to change.

And it means acknowledging that our country’s history and legacy of racial injustice has led many young people of color to feel a sense of desperation or hopelessness about their own futures. That’s why our city is investing greater resources in our Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods and efforts that help our youth find a path to hope and opportunity.

We also must acknowledge and appreciate the challenge, dangers and uncertainty of police work. There are more than 1,200 men and women of the LMPD patrolling our streets and investigating crimes in our community. Every officer must be prepared for a seemingly routine interaction, like a traffic stop, to become a life or death situation in an instant, while still following procedures and treating citizens with respect. That can be an incredibly difficult balance.

While we hold our police to the highest professional standards, we have to also acknowledge that officers are human, that they need our support, and yes, there will be times when even the most well-intentioned will make choices that reveal how much work remains to heal the wounds of the past.

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This is a challenge centuries in the making, and it’s a challenge facing every city in America. It will take time and effort, cooperation and conversation to overcome. I firmly believe that Louisville has the will and social muscles to work through these challenges. And we must, to create the stronger and more equitable future that we all deserve.

Greg Fischer is mayor of Louisville.