6 weeks after LMPD officers shot woman in Valley Station, lack of body cam footage raises concern

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Six weeks after Louisville Metro Police officers shot a woman in Valley Station, the city and the state have yet to release the body camera footage.

The lack of release flies in the face of repeated calls for transparency for a department trying to fix its problem with battered public trust.

"Why are they hiding that police involved shooting on February 19th? What is it that they don't want the public to see?" said Tyra Thomas-Walker, co-chair of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

On Feb. 19, LMPD shot a woman who they said was waving a gun in the streets of Valley Station.

"She was rendered aid immediately and the gun was recovered," Interim LMPD Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at the time.

The woman survived.

The next day, two teens were injured in an "unintentional" shooting by a different LMPD officer.

In the six weeks since, the body camera footage from the incident involving the juveniles has been released, but there has been nothing more said about the woman shot by police in Valley Station. No body camera footage, no names and no personnel files of the officers involved.

"We trust when you say we're going to get this out to you in a certain amount of time, we're waiting on it," said Thomas-Walker. "We want to see it and then we we don't get it in that time, we feel like there's something going on. It's suspect, skeptical, what are you trying to remove?"

LMPD previously released body camera footage, names of officers involved, photos and employment files of officers within 24 hours of a police shooting. That slowed after LMPD officers killed Breonna Taylor as the city decided to turn police shooting investigations over to Kentucky State Police. Once state police started leading the investigation, basic information, including body camera footage, would be released typically within one to two weeks.

In some instances, the city released the personnel information ahead of state police releasing body camera footage. Now, in the new Greenberg administration, neither practice is being followed.

"I encourage all of that information to be released, including the body cam footage right now that's in the hands of KSP," Greenberg said following the shootings. "Our administration is looking at that policy for how we move forward in similar situations in the future."

The results of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation confirmed some harsh realities for LMPD — that it regularly broke policy and the law.

"This conduct is unacceptable. It is heartbreaking. ... It is an affront to the people of Louisville who deserve better," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at Metro Hall in downtown Louisville on March 8 when releasing the DOJ report.

As a result, the mayor and interim police chief have set out on a series of public forums and listening sessions, in part, to rebuild public trust.

"Our goal is to make LMPD the most trusted, trained and transparent police department in America," Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said on March 8.

Despite promises for improvement, Walker said the city falls short of the goal as it is yet to reach full transparency.

"They can continue their investigation and release the footage while they're continuing their investigation, just to put the community at ease about why this individual was shot by the police officers," Thomas-Walker said.

In July 2020, following the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in March 2020, former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer announced that KSP would conduct independent investigations into LMPD shootings in an effort to improve public trust. But even then, KSP's track record with transparency was checkered itself, the agency routinely violating Kentucky's open record law, according to a First Amendment attorney WDRB spoke with in 2020.

Since 2021, KSP has led investigations on at least six shootings involving LMPD.

"Our administration inherited a policy from the previous administration that calls for the Kentucky State Police to investigate all officer-involved shootings," Greenberg said following the shooting of the woman in Valley Station. "So that was the policy that was followed last night and is currently being followed. We will be evaluating that policy — just as we are all policies that we inherited — but right now we are working in close cooperation with the KSP."

In a city trying to get all of its citizens to trust its officers again, for Thomas-Walker, the silence is defining.

"Body cam gets the truth," she said.

The difference between the two shootings is that LMPD is investigating itself in the case of the "unintentional" shooting of the two teens, whereas KSP is investigating the Valley Station shooting.

WDRB News reached out to KSP on Tuesday to look into the delay in releasing the footage, but has not yet heard back.