Louisville launches initiative to bridge gap between police and community

Holding his son in his arms, flanked by more than a dozen fellow steering group members, Dominique Pendergrass explained his interest in the newly launched "Synergy Project."

It's a chance, he said, to explore solutions to the problems "that plague the place that I've called home for 25 years, so that my 4-year-old son ... can grow up in a healthy and safer community than I did as a child."

Those problems: strained police and community relationships that have plenty of room for improvement, according to Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad and other members of the Synergy Project's steering group.

The group hopes to work toward strengthening those relationships, leaders from academia, business, law enforcement and political communities announced at a Thursday press conference.

The Synergy Project, a community engagement initiative, is modeled after the Illumination Project in Charleston, South Carolina, after the city's 2015 church shooting that left nine people dead.

In Louisville, the goal is to explore tensions between the values of public safety and individual rights, and to find a balance between the two. The steering group hopes to develop sessions, taking place into the the fall, to collect community input.

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"Without strong relationships with all parts of our community, we, and I'm talking about the police, can't do what we are tasked to do. And that is keeping our neighborhoods safe," Conrad said.

The police chief told the Courier Journal in April that the department had been working with city leaders to create community conversations where police could hear people's concerns, and the department could "take the ideas that people are sharing and make decisions about trying to change the way we police."

Without that, we're "never going to be able to change the status quo," Conrad said at the early April sit-down interview. "And it's clear to me, we need to change the status quo."

"I will argue that our effectiveness as a police department is tied 100% to the level of trust in our community, and right now I question where that level of trust is," Conrad told the Courier Journal in April.

Weeks later, Conrad announced the police department would change its traffic stop policies, in the wake of community uproar around a traffic stop documented by the Courier Journal.

Though department leadership has insisted that the policy changes, which go into effect on Aug. 1, weren't the result of any one stop, Conrad announced the tweaks a month after the Courier Journal's reporting. 

The changes severely restrict the practice of removing motorists from their cars and handcuffing them while their vehicle is searched. "Merely being nervous or in a high-crime area" doesn't justify either practice, or making motorists sit on the ground during a stop, the policy said. 

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On Thursday, Conrad pointed to that change as evidence that the department is willing to take criticism, to listen to what the public has to say and to incorporate that in what police are doing. 

"But we must go further, if we want to really understand what's going on, and that starts with understanding the origins of mistrust that people feel," Conrad said. 

The project is in conjunction with Lean Into Louisville, launched earlier this year, meant to increase Louisville's understanding of America's complicated history with civil rights in an effort to create a more unified, compassionate and equitable city.

"... Instead of shying away from these sometimes difficult conversations, it's time to lean into them," Mayor Greg Fischer wrote in an op-ed. "It might be challenging at times, but it will also make our community stronger and more deeply connected."

The Synergy Project, similarly, will lean into "challenging" conversations around policing and community engagement, and seek to create "actionable solutions" to move Louisville forward.

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Darcy Costello: 502-582-4834; dcostello@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @dctello. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/darcyc.