The Louisville Metro Public Safety Committee met on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, in Council Chambers/virtually, convening at 4:01 p.m. and adjourning at 5:10 p.m. Chair Dan Seum Jr. established a quorum with seven members present: Seum, Tammy Hawkins, Jonathan Joseph, Scott Reed, Betsy Ruhe, Kevin Bratcher, and Ginny Mulvey-Woolridge; Shameka Parrish-Wright, Andrew Owen, and Markus Winkler were excused. Council Member Jennifer Chappell (D-15) also attended. Reed, Bratcher, and Mulvey-Woolridge participated virtually. The agenda included a special LMPD staffing study update and consideration of O-210-26. Note: The action summary lists Mulvey-Woolridge as present at roll call but lists her excused for the O-210-26 vote.
Chief Paul Humphrey first addressed a recent Metro Office of Inspector General letter/report concerning LMPD traffic stops at the chair's request. He said Sigma Squared produced live dashboards rather than a written report, and LMPD did not renew the $350,000 contract with Sigma Squared because an existing vendor could reproduce the data more cheaply.
The committee considered an ordinance amending Chapter 51 of the Louisville Metro Code of Ordinances regarding licensing fees. Sponsor Dan Seum Jr. said the 2025 amendment increased waste hauler licensing fees from $100 to $500, and this ordinance removes a conflicting fee section dealing with waste disposal facilities. Wes Sydnor, Executive Director of Louisville Metro Public Works, said the fees support an inventory of licensed waste haulers and help enforce illegal dumping rules.
Vice Chair Hawkins moved to recommend approval, seconded by Committee Member Ruhe. The motion carried 6-0 with Seum, Hawkins, Joseph, Reed, Ruhe, and Bratcher voting yes; Parrish-Wright, Owen, Winkler, and Mulvey-Woolridge were excused. The ordinance was sent to the Consent Calendar for the Metro Council meeting on August 13, 2026.
Metro TV thirty seconds, please. WebX okay. Kick it. M. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the public safety committee. I'm your chair, Councilman Dan, and I'm joined by Vice Chair Councilwoman Tammy Hawkins. Today we're f we have the following committee members in attendance. We have Councilwoman Betsy Ruey, Councilman Jonathan Joseph. Virtually, we have Kevin Bratcher, Scott Reed, Jenny Mulby Woolridge. This report was concluded in late April, and we have set this one of the first items as we consider as we returned from our post fiscal year budget break. Today we'll dedicate an hour to hearing from Chief Humphrey on the finding and recommendations within this report. But first, I'd like to ask for the support of this body for Chief Humphrey to deviate from this plan and address the recent letter members of the Metro Council received from the Metro Office of Inspector General regarding a report issued to LMPD related to traffic stops. I have asked Chief Humphrey if he would please take time at the beginning of this meeting to address the statements and findings related. Once he has concluded his comments, I will then seek questions from the committee members. If there are any, I intend to keep this deviation from our report to about 15 minutes so that we can still spend an hour on the operations and staffing study as originally planned. With that said, and with your support, we invite Chief Humphrey and his staff to today's meeting. Thank you, Chief Humphrey. And I ask you and everyone else speaking today, please introduce yourself and your title as you address this committee. Thank you, Chair Sam. Uh Chief Paul Humphrey, LMPD, and I do have uh some data up on the presentation screen. If we can add that so, yes, I appreciate that. So back in last fiscal year, uh, we came to you all and asked for funding to partner with a company called Sigma Squared. Uh what that company was was a company that did uh particularly biased data and hiring practices in the private sector. So they worked on helping companies uh evaluate their hiring practice and make sure that they were uh meeting what they should. Well, we wanted that level of scrutiny as well. Um there have been studies on traffic stops throughout the years, academic level studies, um, as well as what the DOJ did. Uh we never got the results from the Department of Justice exactly, so uh we wanted a more in-depth level look into what was happening on our traffic stops. So, not just the number of traffic stops and the raw disparities, but to be able to actually look in. I'm sorry, it should be on that slide. Um, but to be able to look into the actual actions that are happening on traffic stops. Um, and to give you some background leading up to this, because we also were trying to get officers out there to do work at the same time. So we want we wanted officers to increase their work and productivity in order to keep people safe while at the same time doing it the right way and understanding it. So there was a combination, and so I want to start off with uh this here, where you can see uh our spike in violent crime that began in 2020. And to put that in perspective, uh post-2020, last year was the first year uh that we dropped back down to what you consider average numbers. Um in that 10-year span of uh 2016 to 2025, we had over five thousand people shot or killed in Louisville Metro. And so that was part of what we were also dealing with uh coming into this. And so as we sought out that data to understand uh what we were doing exactly as far as our operations, we wanted to be able to use both the crime data as well as the stop data as as part of what uh educates our process. Uh to keep to keep it simple because it is complicated. Uh so first of all, there is no report uh that was produced by Sigma Squared. Um I know it's been referred to as a report, but these were dashboards, these were live dashboards, and uh as we came uh started preparing for the next fiscal year. Um we were approached by uh company that we already have a contract with. It said they now had the capability to do this within our existing contract, and so that is why we did not renew the 350,000 dollar contract with Sigma Squared is because we're gonna be able to reproduce that data for much cheaper. Um so uh the data uh also captures not just the disparity in the number of stops and searches, but it talks about hit rates. That is really what happens during the traffic stop. What is the hit rate of actually finding contraband when an officer is seeking consent to search a car? And our hit rate was relatively very high overall. It's about 58 percent of the times that officers search someone on a discretionary stop, uh discretionary search, they were actually getting contraband. And I think one expert that was quoted in the news said that that was uh relatively high, that they would expect more, about 25 percent. So very proud of that, but also want to get that number up as well. The two numbers on here that I want you to focus on that I I think are really the crux of this discussion are the 66 percent.