The two firms vying to supervise Louisville’s approach to reforming its troubled police department praised the city for moving forward despite the federal government backing off a plan to require changes.
Representatives from the companies — 21st Century Policing Solutions and Effective Law Enforcement for All — spoke to Louisville residents at a forum Monday evening.
They also took some written questions from the audience during the meeting. The finalists were asked about their diversity, prior experience and how they’ll engage the public.
The independent monitor will play an important role in implementing the city’s reform plan, known as the Community Commitment. The plan mirrors many of the reforms that were included in Louisville’s federal consent decree. While the city and the U.S. Department of Justice both signed the decree last year, President Donald Trump’s administration backed out before it was finalized by a judge.
“This community lost its partnership with the Department of Justice in this effort and has stuck with it,” said Steven Dettlebach of 21CP. “You haven't stopped, you have kept going. It's incredibly impressive.”
Whichever company Mayor Craig Greenberg selects will put together a monitoring team that will be in charge of evaluating the police department’s progress in implementing the reforms and looking at their impact. They’ll also provide semi-annual reports to the public.
Greenberg’s administration selected the two finalists out of a national pool of applicants.
Residents who attended the meeting or watched the livestream online were asked to fill out a survey on the two finalists, which will only be open until Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.
The two teams
Both 21st Century Policing Solutions and Effective Law Enforcement for All are made up of former police officials, reform experts and lawyers.
Effective Law Enforcement for All, or ELEFA, is headed by David Douglass, who currently serves as deputy monitor in New Orleans for their federal consent decree. The nonprofit was appointed last year to oversee police reform in Minneapolis, Minnesota, too.
If selected, Michael Harrison will serve as ELEFA’s head monitor in Louisville. Harrison, who’s served as police chief in New Orleans and Baltimore, said during Monday’s meeting that their commitment to engaging and educating the public about the reform process is what sets them apart.
“We want to make sure that we engage, educate and equip the community and bring the community along as the police department and the city have made promises to transform itself,” he said. “It is our specialty that we, at some point, turn this over to you.”
Sitting on the other side of the stage was 21st Century Policing Solutions, led by Dettlebach.
The company was founded by three members of former President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. They’re currently the lead monitor for Baltimore’s consent decree and have consulted on police reform and community safety for numerous police departments and universities.
Dettlebach, a former U.S. Attorney and head of the ATF under President Joe Biden, said he would be the 21CP’s lead monitor in Louisville. Throughout the meeting, Dettlebach told residents that there was no group of people as experienced in reform as they are.
“We have decades of police chief experience in some of the largest departments in the world,” he said. “We also have different experiences in addition to that.”
Dettlebach said 21CP has people with civil rights and monitoring experience, as well as public policy. The firm is also promising to use data analytics to make sure Louisville police are accomplishing their goals and the reforms are having the intended effect.
‘They don’t know Louisville’
Residents submitted questions for the prospective monitors. One sought to find out how the candidates would balance public safety with protecting civil rights.
The DOJ’s investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department, released in 2023, found local police were routinely violating residents’ civil rights, and that this treatment particularly affected Black residents.
ELEFA’s Michael Harrison said the notion that you can’t do both simultaneously has been debunked. He pointed to his own experience leading police departments in New Orleans and Baltimore while they were under consent decrees.
“Constitutional policing makes better outcomes for arrests and criminal prosecutions,” he said. “You can restore trust in your department … when prosecutions are handled better, convictions are coming faster and more frequently and officers are doing things in a better way.”
Chuck Ramsey, one of the founding partners of 21CP, said his experience overseeing reform in Washington, D.C. in the 1990s also showed him that you can have both. He said it all comes down to good leadership within the department.
“These things just don’t happen,” he said. “You need solid leadership. You have to have good supervision. You have to hold people accountable who do not engage in [good policing.] Without that, it’s no guarantee it’s going to happen.”
Both companies promised to set clear goals for Louisville and its police department, and to provide a clear picture of what compliance looks right.
Residents also asked if ELEFA or 21CP were going to move to Louisville. Both companies said they would not and insisted that was not necessary for the monitor.
ELEFA promised that they would be in Louisville often and, when they are here, would spend time meeting with community members and advocacy groups interested in police reform. 21CP said they plan to hire two community liaisons who live in Louisville.
Their answers didn’t satisfy Bishop Dennis Lyons, pastor of Gospel Missionary Baptist Church in west Louisville. He said he wanted to see more locals being a part of the monitoring teams.
Lyons said, for him, 21CP stood out as the better choice because they said they’d hire liaisons from the community.
“They don’t know Louisville,” he said. “They don’t know us and in order to get to know Louisville they’re going to have to have somebody who lives where we live, sit where we sit and have suffered as we have suffered.”
Lyons said he wants to see the involvement of people who have experienced “discrimination and abuse” by LMPD.
Activist Nancy Cavalcante, who also attended the meeting, said she plans to recommend ELEFA when she fills out the online survey. Cavalcante said she had met with some of ELEFA’s staff in the past and felt they were committed to bringing residents into the process.
“Seeing the diversity of their team was really impactful for me because it’s not a lot of just police,” she said. “I really heard what I needed to hear about the community involvement from ELEFA.”
District 1 Metro Council Member Tammy Hawkins also said Monday night that ELEFA would be her pick. Hawkins, a Democrat who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, said ELEFA’s focus on community engagement won her over.
“That’s what this is about,” Hawkins said. “People that are community-driven are going to hold the police department accountable.”
Both Hawkins and Lyons expressed concerns about the low turnout at the meeting. About 40 people attended, not including press and city officials.
Hawkins said she was also unhappy that residents were only being given 24 hours to watch the meeting back and fill out the online feedback form.
“This city was impacted tremendously,” she said. “That 24 hours is a smack in the face.”
There’s no timeline for when the Greenberg administration will make a final decision. The moderator of Monday’s meeting said a monitor will be selected “soon.”
