The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, now under new leadership, is looking to expand its duties to include tasks such as traffic enforcement.
David James was recently appointed to lead the department after the death of John Aubrey, who was sheriff for more than two decades. James immediately selected former Pee Wee Valley Police Chief Steve Healey to be his chief deputy.
In an interview with LPM News this week, James said he thinks sheriff’s deputies can be the part of the solution to the Louisville Metro Police Department’s staffing shortage. He’s proposing they augment LMPD’s enforcement of “quality-of-life issues.”
“Whether that is speeding, whether that’s ATV and dirt bikes going crazy and tearing up parks, those types of things need law enforcement attention,” James said. “Being able to help and respond to those things is something we’re going to try to be able to do for them.”
James said deputies could be assigned to handle different issues across the county, based on feedback from Metro Council representatives. He said they’ve named speeding and other traffic law violations as priorities.
“Being present, running radar, making traffic stops and slowing vehicles down makes it safer for everybody,” he said. “Things that LMPD, who’s trying to stay focused on violent crime, don’t have the resources to do, we can fill that gap.”
The Sheriff’s Office mostly handles court security, enforcing court orders and carrying out evictions. They’re also tasked under state law with collecting annual property taxes.
Shift into handing out traffic tickets and patrolling neighborhoods or parks, will require more budgeted overtime and new hires, James said. He plans to propose that when he presents next year’s budget to Metro Council in late November.
James is pitching this plan not as a new role for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, but as an expansion of its existing work. He said deputies already provide security for neighborhood events, like the St. Joe’s Picnic, and work on task forces with LMPD and federal partners.
Unlike LMPD, the Sheriff’s Office is not subject to external oversight through the Office of Inspector General or Civilian Review and Accountability Board. James said the office is “committed to constitutional policing” and that it is the sheriff’s responsibility to ensure deputies follow the law when it comes to traffic stops.
Council members back proposal
Louisville Metro Police has a manpower shortage.
Just how shortstaffed LMPD is is a matter of some debate. The most popular estimate puts the shortage between 200 and 300 hundred officers, but that doesn’t take into account the expansion of suburban police departments. Metro Council has commissioned a “strength of force” study to try to get closer to the right number.
What isn’t in question, said District 17 Metro Council Member Markus Winkler, is that many residents feel there are problems LMPD isn’t addressing right now.
“I think people generally understand that response times can vary between emergent and not emergent situations,” he said. “Where I think it becomes a challenge is when the variability is between response time and no response, ever.”
Winkler, a Democrat, said residents get frustrated when they have an issue, like a car break-in, and police don’t respond or tell them to go online and file a report for insurance.
At a recent town hall in Winkler’s far-east district, which covers parts of Anchorage and Lyndon, one of the first questions to Mayor Craig Greenberg was about the perception of safety downtown, he said.
Winkler said the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office having more of a presence on roadways and in neighborhoods would help with how residents view the city.
“I would venture to say that the vast majority of citizens in Louisville are actually much safer than they feel,” he said. “At the end of the day, whether you’re safe or not doesn’t actually matter, it matters whether you believe you’re safe, and that has ripple effects on how people feel about the city, whether they go downtown.”
James, a former police officer and Metro Council president, said the idea of using deputies to augment LMPD’s enforcement of quality-of-life issues came from council members.
District 11 Council Member Kevin Kramer has been beating that drum. Just last week, he cautioned his colleagues about using their neighborhood funds on more LMPD overtime.
“If the police can’t do what they’re contracted to do, and they can’t survive on the budget they told us they needed and we feel like they’re not doing their job, then I think it would be appropriate for us to say, ‘Fine, we’ll go somewhere else and we’ll have a different law enforcement agency perform those services,’” he said at the Metro Council meeting.
Kramer said in an interview this week that he’s grateful the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is looking into filling that gap.
In Kramer’s district, the two biggest issues are car break-ins, where people are mainly looking for guns, and speeding. He said theft can “reasonably stay with LMPD,” but he sees an opportunity for sheriff’s deputies to help with traffic enforcement.
“[LMPD] is not doing traffic citations on roads that the speed limit is less than 55,” Kramer said. “If you get out in my district, there are lots of roads where the speed limit is 35 and 45 miles per hour and people are driving on those roads like it's an expressway.”
There are plenty of other localized issues, Kramer said, where sheriff’s deputies may be able to help out: illegal use of dirt bikes and ATVs in southwest Louisville or abandoned vehicles in the West End.
In the past, Kramer said “there didn’t seem to be an interest” from the sheriff’s office to help address these issues.
He also said he’s not sure how open LMPD is to the proposal, but the fact that James, who most recently served as deputy mayor under Greenberg, is now at the helm of JCSO is encouraging.
“Obviously the mayor has a lot of respect for him,” Kramer said. “I see this as a hopeful sign and anything I can do to help Sheriff James and Chief [Paul] Humphry get together and work out the details, I am happy to facilitate that.”
‘We don’t want to replace LMPD’
James said his plan to augment local law enforcement with sheriff’s deputies will be reflected in the budget he’ll present to Metro Council next month.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is self-funded through the fees it charges for duties such as serving court papers and evictions. Sometimes, they have a budget surplus that can either be given to Louisville Metro or reinvested into the department.
In an interview, James said any funding for overtime and hiring additional deputies would come from existing revenue streams. In other words, the Sheriff’s Office won’t be asking Metro Government for money.
James said they haven't finalized the proposal yet and they don’t know how many deputies they could dedicate to enforcement. They’re also still working on a name for the team. It could be something like “a community services unit.”
“We don’t want to replace LMPD, but if you talk to the council members there are quality of life issues that are taking place in their districts that LMPD is unable to respond to,” he said.
In a statement, LMPD Spokesperson Matt Sanders said LMPD welcomes the support.
“We appreciate the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office’s willingness to assist with efforts such as traffic enforcement and curbing illegal ATV use,” Sanders said.
He said LMPD Chief Humphrey has had preliminary conversations with the sheriff and the department looks forward “to continued collaboration as their proposal moves forward.”
