![]() ![]() Metro Council President David James, D-6 th, a former police officer who will relinquish his position as council president in January, said he would have liked to see Shields regularly update the community on crime, recruitment efforts, homicide numbers and the status of reforms. Another has been implementing many of the reform recommendations in the Hillard Heintze report, a top-to-bottom review of the department by an independent firm that Fischer ordered on the heels of Taylor's death. He said she introduced a culture of no-nonsense for bad officer behavior and laid the foundation for the improvements that are underway.įischer said one of the most significant long-term improvements she made was restructuring the training division to include civilians who help with legal instruction, curriculum development and academic direction. "She came in a time when our police force needed some stability and an experienced hand," Fischer told the Courier Journal. ![]() Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said Shields was a leader who stepped up when the city really needed her, calling her one of the best police chiefs in America. “What I tell you is I’m here to fight for you, I’m here to listen to you and I’m here to help us bring forward the transformation that you all want to see within LMPD so that the department is a model that we can all stand proud of,” Shields said when she was sworn in on Jan. LMPD Chief Erika Shields speaks before the Louisville Metro Council on public safety. … We needed some unification between the police force and the public (and) I don’t feel any of that was taken care of.” I’m not saying we haven’t had reforms because we have. “I’m not saying she hasn’t done things behind the scenes. “We needed her to be a leader,” said Metro Councilmember James Peden, R-23rd, who served on Mayor Greg Fischer’s chief selection committee in 2020 and is vice chair of the council’s public safety committee. ![]() And critics say the reforms that were done, happened behind closed doors with little visibility to the public. Though Shields did implement reforms, she has largely failed to rebuild community trust, a Courier Journal review found. Her tenure came after years of high-profile incidents shrouded in secrecy that eroded public trust, including the sexual abuse of children in the department’s Explorer Scout program and the police killing of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman who was shot during the execution of a "no-knock" warrant in a failed drug investigation. Hired in 2021 to lead a broken Louisville Metro Police Department, Chief Erika Shields promised reform, transparency and restoration of confidence in city police. ![]()
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