Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning news Radio A forty whas always a pleasure
to talk to Police Chief Paul Humphrey from the Louisville
Metro Police Department. I get the honor of talking to
him this morning. Hello, I'm going to call you Paul.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, thanks, thanks for having men. It's all good.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Chief, It's good to see you. As always, You've been
doing a little bit of a whirlwind with the media here.
I appreciate the openness and the transparency that you're bringing
to the office.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, I'm proud of what we do. I'm excited about it,
and I think it's always good to tell people about
what we do, so I'm never going to shy away
from that.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
You know, murder rates are a tricky thing because sometimes
people still get shot or shot at, but they don't
get killed. But we have two months of some pretty
dangerous situations again that are going on, and we have
what twenty murders at this juncture, maybe more.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So, we were actually doing pretty good. We were far
below our rate year to date up until last week.
When you know, the last week and a half, I
think we've had eight homicides in the last week and
a half, and so we get these spikes. We know,
we know those happen sometimes, but in all honesty, it
really frustrates me because you know, you throw your heart
(01:18):
and soul in there. You got officers out here pounding
the pavement, trying to trying to keep people safe, and
you have a few, a few people. It's really not
that many people that cause all of these problems, and
so you know, putting them on notice, we're coming.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's interesting, are most of these related? Do you think
to drugs or well or not?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I think a lot of this. You know, most murders
happened because of some other type of illicit activity. It's
not Most murders are not random, uh, and so it's
it's usually somebody who they know, who they have some
kind of beef with, whether it's over drugs, whether it's
over social media, whether it's over you know, gang feuds.
(02:02):
But most murders are not random. Sou if you're not
involved in I legal activity, odds are you're not going
to be a victim of a homicide or violent crime.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Why does mainly young men? I guess there's women also.
Why do they get involved in gangs? Ball?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
You know, that's a that's an interesting question. I think
if we if we knew the answer to that completely,
we'd both be pretty rich. But I think there's a
combination of things. There's there's social pressures. H when you
see the people around you, you tend to act like
the people around you.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Uh, kids of doctors grow up to be doctors, kids
of cops grow up to be cops. And when you
see the people around you that are involved in that
lifestyle and those those are your role models. It's unfortunate,
but you can often get caught in that lifestyle too.
I think there's a combination of social pressures, economic pressures.
And this country does not lack for opportunity at all.
(03:00):
I believe we're the best country in the world when
it comes to opportunity. But I think oftentimes we have
pockets of people that don't recognize the opportunity that's available
to them. For whatever reasons, they are blinded to and
don't get exposed to what they actually can be outside
of that lifestyle. You know, we do, uh, we do
(03:21):
what's called group violence intervention. And when I go and
talk to these groups, sometimes what I tell them is
you don't you don't have to live that lifestyle. There
is another option. I think. I think a lot of
these young people think that because that's what I grew
up around them, because that's what I see. Anything else
is for somebody else, it's for it's for the suburban kids,
(03:44):
it's for the white kids. It's for somebody else, not
for me, mhm. But a comfortable lifestyle is for anybody
who is able to work their butts off and see
the opportunities and say no to a lot of the
bays that are around them. And unfortunately, for a lot
of kids, that means that you're going to have to
(04:05):
step away from a lot of the people that you
grew up with, and you're gonna have to take a
lonely road in order to get out of that lifestyle sometimes.
But that's the tough choices. And we're talking about young
people right.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
A lot of times, yes, sir, A lot of times
we talk about parenting, whatever the case may be. A
lot of times, you know, you can just look at
the result of single family parenting. Maybe maybe the dad's
not really engaged, the mom's doing doing their job, trying
to you know, make help the kids eat, have a
(04:39):
house over their head, and working, you know, twelve hours
a day. Or something of that nature, and it could
be taxing on them. So poverty, I would say, is
a part of this. Lack of transportation, kids can't go
other places, those kind of things. How can we work
with kids in those situations?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So, like you said, there's all these socioeconomic factors that
that lead to this stuff. And if it's at the
point where the police have to start raising your kids,
we're already lost, right, So it is about how do
we get to those parents, How do we get to
those families before the police have to interact with the kids.
And when you're you're oftentimes you're talking about parents who
(05:17):
never had a good example of how to be a
parent in the first place, so they're doing their best
job they can. And you know, I've talked about this
and some of the boards that I'm on where we
get frustrated with some of the parents and the lack
of participation, you know, in the kids' school and education
and things like that. And what I try to remind
people of is there's a reason why they're coming to
(05:39):
us for help because they don't they don't know how
to do it better, So they're turning their kids over
to us. And so all of these non governmental organizations, churches,
social groups. We have to figure out a way to
get to more people, particularly young parents, because that's I
(05:59):
think that it's gonna be a big key is stop
trying to get to the kid. Let's get to the
young parent and teach them how to be a parent,
Teach them how to manage their money, teach them how
to talk to their kid in a way that's gonna
be positive. There is nothing more depressing than watching a
mom say you're a piece of crap, just like your daddy. Well,
what do you think they're gonna be right? You know,
(06:20):
they're gonna be the expectations you set for them. And
so when you when you pull a kid away and
say when you see the police and you say you
better be good or they're gonna get you, what do
you think they're gonna do?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
They're gonna live up to the expectations you set for them.
And a lot of times I don't even blame the
parents because that's they don't they don't know any better.
They're they're trying to do the best job they can
in a tough situation that they found themselves in.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I know a lot of people they don't like taking
care of the poor, and and and well they don't.
It's not that they say get off, you know, get
off your butt and you know, pull up your bootstraps
and those kind of things, but it's really tough if
you can't ford a car. I'm not. And you know,
(07:03):
I am so tired of labels, you know, conservative, liberal,
and all this kind of stuff. It's just where are we?
How came the lady changed my life, Miss Green, at
Westford High School when I wasn't going to go to college,
and she said I need to see you. I go.
Why she goes cause you test well, but you're in
the bottom thirty year class. And she came up to
me and she said, you can do better, and I'm
(07:23):
going to show you how. And she challenged me to
make straight a's the last two years in high school,
and I got my grades up and I went to
college because she got involved. But you know, when you're
not going to get involved as well as part of
the community, I mean, and just going to point the
fingers and look at those bumbs or whatever you want
to say, the things that get said, that's where we
(07:46):
have issues. And so then the government tries to to
work and fix it as well. And that doesn't always
work either.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, it's very easy to point the finger and forget
all of the advantages that we all had to us.
We've all had setbacks and taken steps back and had
something to fall back on, whether it's our parents, our grandparents,
that teacher in our life that took care of us.
I was very much like you. It sounds like I
got very good test scores, but I did not do
(08:17):
just about anything else very well. But I also recognized
that when I look at where I grew up and
all the people that I grew up with, and versus
where I went to school, I went to Saint X.
I was very very fortunate to have this backdrop that
I could rely on that when things weren't going well otherwise,
I still had Saint X to fall back on, right
(08:38):
and I had teachers that were pushing me and putting
me in the right spaces. And I can tell you
that if I had if I had performed at any
other school the way that I performed at Saint X,
I would have never gone to college. I would not
have been ready. I almost flunked out of Saint X. However,
went to college and was very successful and had almost
an easy route, And so I think you're right. Nobody
(08:58):
wants to do a bad job. We look at people
across professions, everybody from CEOs to the person working at McDonald's.
Nobody wants to do a bad job, right, and sometimes
they need to be pushed and they need to have
somebody believe in them. I talk about that with the
police department, Right, We've been crapped on and talked about
(09:21):
very poorly for a long time. Well, you know, we
have hard working people here who are working their tails
off doing an absolutely great job. And sometimes you just
need somebody to believe in you, and you know you're
gonna live up to the expectations that people set for you.
So I'm a firm believer in setting high expectations for people,
regardless of where they are, and then holding them to
(09:43):
that standard. And when you hold people to that standard,
they start to develop that sense of self pride and
that self determination that that's what we want out of
the American dream, right, is somebody that pushes themselves to
achieve and sees the opportunities that this country gives us.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I was gonna ask about, you know, these different cases,
but Uh, we don't. I'm more interested. Another question I
wanted to have is how do you guys get the
steel to do your job, the courage to do your job,
but also remain compassionate. I don't. I don't know how
you handle that as cops.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, there's a there's a real concept called compassion fatigue
that we face all the time. And I can tell
you as a as a young cop, it hit me very,
very hard when you know there is something exciting about
going out here and chasing dope and chasing guns and
getting fights and foot chases, and you're constantly kind of
sinking that adrenaline dump. But you have to remind yourself
(10:41):
of why you do it. You don't do it for
that for that gun. You don't do it for for
that bad guy that you're taking off the street. You're
doing it for the old lady that lives on the corner,
that wants to be able to walk to her car
and feel safe. And so when you when you keep
that in the back of your mind when you're doing
all those things, it does keep you around it.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I think people think they look at us a lot
of times and they think, oh, look, how callous they are.
Look how cold they are. You know, sometimes you have
to shut some of your emotions off to be able
to deal with what we deal with and not take
it into the next thing. So if I go from
a bad car accident to a bad domestic where a
kid got beat up, and now I'm dealing with you
(11:21):
when your car got broken into, well that seems like
it's not really that big of a deal. But you're
freaking out and you're looking at me like, well, why
doesn't he care about me having my stuff stolen out
of my car? Well, sometimes we have to just shut
that off. Right, If we gave everybody one hundred percent
of our emotional array, we we would kill ourselves. And
(11:45):
so we do have to do a better job of
emotional management. That's why that's why we developed the Summit
Wellness Center at l ANDPD. That's why the emotional support
the social support systems that we're trying to put in
are so important. Is because that helps officers perform better
and treat people better.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I appreciate your time. You did a great job, and
we we really do appreciate your chief.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, I appreciate it. I'm proud of the men and
women of LLMPD, both professional staff and sworn staff. They
go out there every day and they pour their heart
and soul into it, and uh, you can trust that
we're going to push them to a high standard and
we expect them to do well.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
LMPD Police Chief Paul Humphrey joining us here this morning
on contec Cantas Morning News. Thanks so much, thank you, sir. Coach.
All Right, we gotta get to a break. We're late,
and well we've got some traffics to get to and
uh we'll have John cham with the news coming up
in just a bit.
Good morning news Radio A forty whas always a pleasure
to talk to Police Chief Paul Humphrey from the Louisville
Metro Police Department. I get the honor of talking to
him this morning. Hello, I'm going to call you Paul.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, thanks, thanks for having men. It's all good.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Chief, It's good to see you. As always, You've been
doing a little bit of a whirlwind with the media here.
I appreciate the openness and the transparency that you're bringing
to the office.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, I'm proud of what we do. I'm excited about it,
and I think it's always good to tell people about
what we do, so I'm never going to shy away
from that.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
You know, murder rates are a tricky thing because sometimes
people still get shot or shot at, but they don't
get killed. But we have two months of some pretty
dangerous situations again that are going on, and we have
what twenty murders at this juncture, maybe more.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So, we were actually doing pretty good. We were far
below our rate year to date up until last week.
When you know, the last week and a half, I
think we've had eight homicides in the last week and
a half, and so we get these spikes. We know,
we know those happen sometimes, but in all honesty, it
really frustrates me because you know, you throw your heart
(01:18):
and soul in there. You got officers out here pounding
the pavement, trying to trying to keep people safe, and
you have a few, a few people. It's really not
that many people that cause all of these problems, and
so you know, putting them on notice, we're coming.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's interesting, are most of these related? Do you think
to drugs or well or not?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I think a lot of this. You know, most murders
happened because of some other type of illicit activity. It's
not Most murders are not random, uh, and so it's
it's usually somebody who they know, who they have some
kind of beef with, whether it's over drugs, whether it's
over social media, whether it's over you know, gang feuds.
(02:02):
But most murders are not random. Sou if you're not
involved in I legal activity, odds are you're not going
to be a victim of a homicide or violent crime.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Why does mainly young men? I guess there's women also.
Why do they get involved in gangs? Ball?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
You know, that's a that's an interesting question. I think
if we if we knew the answer to that completely,
we'd both be pretty rich. But I think there's a
combination of things. There's there's social pressures. H when you
see the people around you, you tend to act like
the people around you.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Uh, kids of doctors grow up to be doctors, kids
of cops grow up to be cops. And when you
see the people around you that are involved in that
lifestyle and those those are your role models. It's unfortunate,
but you can often get caught in that lifestyle too.
I think there's a combination of social pressures, economic pressures.
And this country does not lack for opportunity at all.
(03:00):
I believe we're the best country in the world when
it comes to opportunity. But I think oftentimes we have
pockets of people that don't recognize the opportunity that's available
to them. For whatever reasons, they are blinded to and
don't get exposed to what they actually can be outside
of that lifestyle. You know, we do, uh, we do
(03:21):
what's called group violence intervention. And when I go and
talk to these groups, sometimes what I tell them is
you don't you don't have to live that lifestyle. There
is another option. I think. I think a lot of
these young people think that because that's what I grew
up around them, because that's what I see. Anything else
is for somebody else, it's for it's for the suburban kids,
(03:44):
it's for the white kids. It's for somebody else, not
for me, mhm. But a comfortable lifestyle is for anybody
who is able to work their butts off and see
the opportunities and say no to a lot of the
bays that are around them. And unfortunately, for a lot
of kids, that means that you're going to have to
(04:05):
step away from a lot of the people that you
grew up with, and you're gonna have to take a
lonely road in order to get out of that lifestyle sometimes.
But that's the tough choices. And we're talking about young
people right.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
A lot of times, yes, sir, A lot of times
we talk about parenting, whatever the case may be. A
lot of times, you know, you can just look at
the result of single family parenting. Maybe maybe the dad's
not really engaged, the mom's doing doing their job, trying
to you know, make help the kids eat, have a
(04:39):
house over their head, and working, you know, twelve hours
a day. Or something of that nature, and it could
be taxing on them. So poverty, I would say, is
a part of this. Lack of transportation, kids can't go
other places, those kind of things. How can we work
with kids in those situations?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So, like you said, there's all these socioeconomic factors that
that lead to this stuff. And if it's at the
point where the police have to start raising your kids,
we're already lost, right, So it is about how do
we get to those parents, How do we get to
those families before the police have to interact with the kids.
And when you're you're oftentimes you're talking about parents who
(05:17):
never had a good example of how to be a
parent in the first place, so they're doing their best
job they can. And you know, I've talked about this
and some of the boards that I'm on where we
get frustrated with some of the parents and the lack
of participation, you know, in the kids' school and education
and things like that. And what I try to remind
people of is there's a reason why they're coming to
(05:39):
us for help because they don't they don't know how
to do it better, So they're turning their kids over
to us. And so all of these non governmental organizations, churches,
social groups. We have to figure out a way to
get to more people, particularly young parents, because that's I
(05:59):
think that it's gonna be a big key is stop
trying to get to the kid. Let's get to the
young parent and teach them how to be a parent,
Teach them how to manage their money, teach them how
to talk to their kid in a way that's gonna
be positive. There is nothing more depressing than watching a
mom say you're a piece of crap, just like your daddy. Well,
what do you think they're gonna be right? You know,
(06:20):
they're gonna be the expectations you set for them. And
so when you when you pull a kid away and
say when you see the police and you say you
better be good or they're gonna get you, what do
you think they're gonna do?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
They're gonna live up to the expectations you set for them.
And a lot of times I don't even blame the
parents because that's they don't they don't know any better.
They're they're trying to do the best job they can
in a tough situation that they found themselves in.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I know a lot of people they don't like taking
care of the poor, and and and well they don't.
It's not that they say get off, you know, get
off your butt and you know, pull up your bootstraps
and those kind of things, but it's really tough if
you can't ford a car. I'm not. And you know,
(07:03):
I am so tired of labels, you know, conservative, liberal,
and all this kind of stuff. It's just where are we?
How came the lady changed my life, Miss Green, at
Westford High School when I wasn't going to go to college,
and she said I need to see you. I go.
Why she goes cause you test well, but you're in
the bottom thirty year class. And she came up to
me and she said, you can do better, and I'm
(07:23):
going to show you how. And she challenged me to
make straight a's the last two years in high school,
and I got my grades up and I went to
college because she got involved. But you know, when you're
not going to get involved as well as part of
the community, I mean, and just going to point the
fingers and look at those bumbs or whatever you want
to say, the things that get said, that's where we
(07:46):
have issues. And so then the government tries to to
work and fix it as well. And that doesn't always
work either.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, it's very easy to point the finger and forget
all of the advantages that we all had to us.
We've all had setbacks and taken steps back and had
something to fall back on, whether it's our parents, our grandparents,
that teacher in our life that took care of us.
I was very much like you. It sounds like I
got very good test scores, but I did not do
(08:17):
just about anything else very well. But I also recognized
that when I look at where I grew up and
all the people that I grew up with, and versus
where I went to school, I went to Saint X.
I was very very fortunate to have this backdrop that
I could rely on that when things weren't going well otherwise,
I still had Saint X to fall back on, right
(08:38):
and I had teachers that were pushing me and putting
me in the right spaces. And I can tell you
that if I had if I had performed at any
other school the way that I performed at Saint X,
I would have never gone to college. I would not
have been ready. I almost flunked out of Saint X. However,
went to college and was very successful and had almost
an easy route, And so I think you're right. Nobody
(08:58):
wants to do a bad job. We look at people
across professions, everybody from CEOs to the person working at McDonald's.
Nobody wants to do a bad job, right, and sometimes
they need to be pushed and they need to have
somebody believe in them. I talk about that with the
police department, Right, We've been crapped on and talked about
(09:21):
very poorly for a long time. Well, you know, we
have hard working people here who are working their tails
off doing an absolutely great job. And sometimes you just
need somebody to believe in you, and you know you're
gonna live up to the expectations that people set for you.
So I'm a firm believer in setting high expectations for people,
regardless of where they are, and then holding them to
(09:43):
that standard. And when you hold people to that standard,
they start to develop that sense of self pride and
that self determination that that's what we want out of
the American dream, right, is somebody that pushes themselves to
achieve and sees the opportunities that this country gives us.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I was gonna ask about, you know, these different cases,
but Uh, we don't. I'm more interested. Another question I
wanted to have is how do you guys get the
steel to do your job, the courage to do your job,
but also remain compassionate. I don't. I don't know how
you handle that as cops.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, there's a there's a real concept called compassion fatigue
that we face all the time. And I can tell
you as a as a young cop, it hit me very,
very hard when you know there is something exciting about
going out here and chasing dope and chasing guns and
getting fights and foot chases, and you're constantly kind of
sinking that adrenaline dump. But you have to remind yourself
(10:41):
of why you do it. You don't do it for
that for that gun. You don't do it for for
that bad guy that you're taking off the street. You're
doing it for the old lady that lives on the corner,
that wants to be able to walk to her car
and feel safe. And so when you when you keep
that in the back of your mind when you're doing
all those things, it does keep you around it.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I think people think they look at us a lot
of times and they think, oh, look, how callous they are.
Look how cold they are. You know, sometimes you have
to shut some of your emotions off to be able
to deal with what we deal with and not take
it into the next thing. So if I go from
a bad car accident to a bad domestic where a
kid got beat up, and now I'm dealing with you
(11:21):
when your car got broken into, well that seems like
it's not really that big of a deal. But you're
freaking out and you're looking at me like, well, why
doesn't he care about me having my stuff stolen out
of my car? Well, sometimes we have to just shut
that off. Right, If we gave everybody one hundred percent
of our emotional array, we we would kill ourselves. And
(11:45):
so we do have to do a better job of
emotional management. That's why that's why we developed the Summit
Wellness Center at l ANDPD. That's why the emotional support
the social support systems that we're trying to put in
are so important. Is because that helps officers perform better
and treat people better.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I appreciate your time. You did a great job, and
we we really do appreciate your chief.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, I appreciate it. I'm proud of the men and
women of LLMPD, both professional staff and sworn staff. They
go out there every day and they pour their heart
and soul into it, and uh, you can trust that
we're going to push them to a high standard and
we expect them to do well.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
LMPD Police Chief Paul Humphrey joining us here this morning
on contec Cantas Morning News. Thanks so much, thank you, sir. Coach.
All Right, we gotta get to a break. We're late,
and well we've got some traffics to get to and
uh we'll have John cham with the news coming up
in just a bit.
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