LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- In a time when violence is continuing in the city, the Louisville Metro Police Department needs officers.
LMPD spokesperson Officer Beth Ruoff said Monday that LMPD is down 241 sworn officers and also has openings for civilians.
"We're down 312 between sworn employees and civilian employees," Ruoff said. "Some of those are really the backbone to the police department, which include the service center, our telephone reporting unit and our anonymous tip line. It houses all of that."
The most recent data from LMPD shows that, as of Sunday, June 20, there have been 99 homicides. As of Tuesday, there have been more than 320 non-fatal shootings in Louisville so far this year.
"Any given year, solving cases is a challenge always, with a lack of evidence but especially when manpower is down like it is right now," Ruoff said. "The workload is astronomical."
It's not just the Homicide Unit handling several cases. Division detectives are tasked with the non-fatal shootings.
"It is really a drain both physically, emotionally, all of it, because detectives want to clear their cases," Ruoff said. "They want to solve these cases and bring closure to these victims and their families. So it is tough. It's challenging on the entire police department."
In a recent "On The Record" LMPD podcast, Chief Erika Shields outlined the shortage of officers. This was discussed in the department's second episode.
"I want folks to understand the difficulties I'm experiencing in navigating our shortage of personnel, and I'm afraid it's going to only get more pronounced," Shields said. "Hiring, of course, is a challenge across the United States in law enforcement. But I would say particularly so in Louisville and Minneapolis."
LMPD podcast from June 2021 with Chief Erika Shields
Shields said she'd like to see a city the size of Louisville have around 1,300 officers but stressed that LMPD is around 250 short of what the department is authorized to have.
Ryan Nichols, president of the River City Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), told WDRB News on Tuesday that he believes LMPD should be authorized to have even more officers. Somewhere around 1,500-1,600 is what he would like to see.
"The space I have found myself in since I got here is I'm having to weigh victims against one another, and it's not a space any cop wants to be in," Shields said on the recent podcast. "I've had to weigh do we put more cops in Homicide or do we put more cops in the street to get the guns off the street that are causing the homicides? Or do we pull individuals out of investigative units?"
Her message to police is to not take it personal when there are changes to how the department's staffing.
"It's just we don't have the people, and we're having an unprecedented level of shootings," she said.
Even on the first LMPD podcast, Shields addressed the issue.
"We also are struggling with staffing," she said. "In a perfect world, I would assign 10 more people to the Homicide Unit. I just, I don’t have those folks.”
Metro Council President David James said pay is a big part of the struggle to keep officers within LMPD.
"Officers are so poorly paid they've been going everywhere else to other agencies where they get paid much better to work," James said.
James said this situation is frustrating and he called it "easily predictable."
"It's very difficult to do proactive policing when you don't even have police to do reactive policing," he said.
Nichols also said officer pay is an issue.
"The pay and benefits structure is going to have to increase dramatically," he said.
He said contract negotiations are currently underway with Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, but he didn't have an answer for when those could be complete.
"We're meeting regularly," Nichols said.
James said Metro Council is not kept updated about those negotiations.
Nichols said there can be 48 recruits in a class, but in the podcast, Shields said some recruit classes are only filled with around 15 people. Nichols said he believes it could take years to turn around staffing numbers.
"We've had officers leaving at record rates, so unless we address those things and change that, we're 10 years away at least from getting healthy," he said.
In the podcast, LMPD planned for a future episode focused on recruitment and selection.
For information on sworn officer and civilian openings, click here.
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