Violent crime is down, but some residents still see downtown Louisville as dangerous. Mayor Craig Greenberg wants to address that.
The city continued to renovate and improve public assets. It reopened the Parkland Library in the West End, which had been closed for nearly four decades, and cut the ribbon on four new parks, including Waterfront Park’s westward expansion, Playport.
Louisville also faced multiple disasters this year. In April, floodwaters from the Ohio River inundated local homes and businesses, shutting down parts of the city for the better part of a week. And last month, a UPS plane crash killed 14 people and injured more than 20 others.
Greenberg said those tragedies showed Louisville’s strength and “how much we love our city and we love our neighbors.”
“My hope is to continue that unity that we saw following the tragic crash of UPS Flight 2976 into the future, where it continues not only after tragedies, but every day,” he said. “Help neighbors in our own neighborhoods. Help others that need support … Even when we don’t agree, which is totally normal and totally OK, there are still common values.”
City leaders also continued to address public safety this year and the high level of violent crime Louisville’s experienced since 2020.
An excerpt of that part of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, is below:
Roberto Roldan: Louisville has seen more than 100 homicides each year since the COVID-19 pandemic. We're going to break triple digits again this year, but it does look like in 2025 we'll have about a 20% drop. That’s the largest year-over-year decrease since the pandemic. What do you think is behind some of that?
Mayor Craig Greenberg: I think there are several things. As you mentioned, the stats from this year, the reduction in shootings and homicides are over 20%. Since I've been mayor, shootings are down over 40% in three years.
So, starting with Chief [Paul] Humphrey and the improved leadership of he and his entire team, you now see more officers that are wanting to work for LMPD. When I first became mayor, I think there were about eight or nine people in an academy recruit class. In the last class that we just enrolled in the academy: 41. We want those officers on the street working with the community to prevent crime from happening.
One of my biggest challenges and frustrations as mayor is to see the young people that are picking up guns and using them against other young people, 16- and 17-year-olds. Some even younger. We know if we wait until someone's in high school, it might already be too late. And so now we're really doing some things in middle school with our Get Busy! initiative to work with nonprofit organizations to help keep kids on the right path.
RR: While we've seen violent crime in Louisville, and across the country, dropping, we know that so many people perceive that things are worse than ever. How does a city deal with the perception issue?
CG: The perception of safety is so incredibly important. Stats don't translate into the perception of safety. I think there are a couple of things driving that and I'll talk about what we're doing about that.
One is just, we're constantly seeing all of these violent crimes take place, and not just in Louisville. I mean, look at what my son Ben experienced at Brown University. Look at what happened in Australia. Look at what happened a couple of weeks ago at Kentucky State University. It's happening all over and people are living in a world fearful of violent crime.
Then, people here in Louisville, I think a lot of their minds goes back to what their experiences might have been downtown in years past. Downtown is a very different place today than it was when I first became mayor three years ago. It's safe, it's much cleaner. We fixed the light bulbs and the street lights work. We've cleaned the streets up. There's more ambassadors on the streets to greet you. It's just going to take people's experiences of coming downtown, whether it's for an event at the Yum! Center, whether it's to eat, whether it's to go to one of our bourbon experiences, and telling their friends about what a positive experience they have. It's going to take some of that to overcome the fear that was built up over years.
We're going to do everything we can do here in our city, every idea that we have the authority to do, we will try. But, there is so much more that can be done with help from legislators in Frankfort and Washington, D.C. and so I will not stop advocating.
RR: Talking about Washington, D.C., one of the things that we've seen in 2025 is that this national debate around immigration has become a local issue. You got some criticism for changing city policy to hold people in jail longer so that ICE could come pick them up. In retrospect, do you think you made the right decision?
CG: Absolutely. It was certainly a tough decision, but if you want to be mayor of Louisville, you better be prepared to make difficult decisions every single day. This was one of the most difficult decisions that I've had to make, because I don't think there was any great outcome, whatever the decision was. But, what I can say now is looking back at that decision over the past several months — when you see what's happened in Chicago, in Charlotte, in New Orleans, in other cities where there have been mass ICE raids, where the National Guard has entered those cities — we haven't seen that here.
