Louisville’s interim police chief, Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, will proceed completely in her function and take over a division that has been in turmoil for the reason that 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor and was excoriated this yr in a scathing U.S. Department of Justice report.
Ms. Gwinn-Villaroel, 49, would be the first Black lady to serve completely because the Louisville Metro Police Department’s chief. She had been interim chief since January, after the resignation of her predecessor, Erika Shields, one in every of a number of latest management modifications.
“Over the past six months, Chief Gwinn-Villaroel has shown our city that she has exactly what I’m looking for in a chief and exactly what our community is looking for in a leader,” Mayor Craig Greenberg, who took workplace in January, stated Thursday in a news launch asserting her hiring. “She has extensive experience in law enforcement leadership and a record of reform.”
Chief Gwinn-Villaroel, a 26-year regulation enforcement veteran, began with the division in 2021 as a deputy chief after having spent her total profession on the Atlanta Police Department.
Ms. Gwinn-Villaroel first served below Ms. Shields in Atlanta, till Ms. Shields resigned after the police capturing demise of Rayshard Brooks in 2020.
Ms. Gwinn-Villaroel is the fifth individual to guide Louisville’s police drive since June 2020, when Chief Steve Conrad was fired after officers killed a preferred restaurant proprietor in a firefight throughout that summer time’s protests. Two interim chiefs crammed in earlier than Ms. Shields took over the division in January 2021.
Louisville’s police division started drawing intense scrutiny in 2020 after officers shot and killed Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, in her house throughout a no-knock warrant raid in the midst of the night time. Four officers concerned in that capturing have been charged final yr.
But tensions between the drive and the town’s residents had been constructing lengthy earlier than Ms. Taylor’s demise.
In March, the U.S. Department of Justice launched the outcomes of an investigation that concluded that the Louisville Metro Police Department had routinely violated residents’ constitutional rights.
“For years, LMPD has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city,” the report learn.
Ms. Gwinn-Villaroel stated on Thursday she would give attention to rebuilding group belief and decreasing violent crime within the metropolis.
“We understand that we’ve got to continue to work on those relationships and build upon that community trust that we’re just everyday working on,” Ms. Gwinn-Villaroel stated at a news convention. “We are invested in making sure that we get it right.”
Source: www.nytimes.com