Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (https://kycir.org/author/eklibanoff/)
Eleanor Klibanoff joined the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting in June 2017. Klibanoff previously worked at Keystone Crossroads, a public radio project covering urban decline and recovery in the Rust Belt. She was a Kroc Fellow at NPR and a recipient of a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grant to cover maternal healthcare in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
The old policy stressed that officers should only shoot at a moving vehicle “when it does not create an unreasonable risk of harm to innocent persons.”
The city and state police had an agreement dictating the terms of KSP investigating LMPD’s police shootings. But it was revoked, and no one is saying why.
The reform could have major repercussions for transparency and accountability — the exact issues this change was intended to address.
Tammy Riggs was at work when she got an alert on her phone from a local news station about a police shooting. She watched the station’s live video stream for hours. “And I didn’t know it was my son,” she said.
Usually, when LMPD kills someone, families are left entirely in the dark about how the police are handling the case, an investigation by Newsy and the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting found.
As part of its historic, $12 million settlement with the family of Breonna Taylor, Louisville has agreed to implement several major police reforms, including creating an early warning system to identify officer behavioral trends to prevent misconduct. This is not the first time the city has made such a promise. In the wake of police shootings and as a response to critical audits, the Louisville Metro Police Department has frequently asserted that it already has such a system, or is on the cusp of implementing one. The current LMPD policy manual says it is actively using such a system. But it’s not, a joint investigation by Newsy and the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting has found.
The contractor worked for MSD director Tony Parrott in Cincinnati, a contract one city councilman at the time called “unconscionable.”
Despite regularly reviewing fatalities for more than 25 years, Louisville’s domestic violence response remains imperfect. The reviews often raise the same issues, again and again.
The former executive director of the Kentucky Office of Unemployment Insurance told legislators Thursday the agency’s chaotic rush to deliver benefits in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic led to months-long delays — and may have violated federal unemployment regulations.
Muncie McNamara testified before the Interim Joint Committee on Economic Development and Workforce Investment. The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting first reported the details of McNamara’s time at the Office of Unemployment Insurance earlier this month; he was hired personally by Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman in January and fired in May, amid the chaos of the pandemic.
McNamara spoke for almost half an hour about the issues he saw at the agency. After his testimony, Republican lawmakers questioned him about Gov. Andy Beshear’s response, the months-long delays and data security. Only one Democratic lawmaker was called on to ask questions.
McNamara told legislators that neither he nor Josh Benton, the Deputy Secretary for the Cabinet for Education and Workforce Development, were consulted before Beshear announced a statewide shutdown of in-person business that led to a massive spike in unemployment.
According to McNamara, Beshear and Benton wanted to quickly extend benefits to independent contractors and other workers who previously wouldn’t have qualified.
“[Benton] stated he wanted to do this as soon as possible, and he did not want to wait for the feds, the U.S. Department of Labor, to act,” McNamara testified. “He wanted Kentucky to take the lead in this.”
McNamara said that decision to move quickly at the beginning has contributed to the months-long delays for benefits the state is now trying to untangle.
Benton has been the face of the state’s unemployment office in recent months.