Pegasus Institute

This January, we debuted our District Data Dashboard. The Dashboard tracks six county-level data points that we feel must be improved for Kentucky to move forward. Five of those data points we tracked before. This year, we added a sixth – full-time, local law enforcement officers per 1000 residents. We found that the state averages 1.2 full-time, local officers per 1000 residents. We also found that 23 counties – nearly a fifth of the counties in the state – had 0.0 full-time

With the bipartisan rejection of an insurance tax hike, Louisville Metro Government must redirect $35 million to pension obligations for the FY20 budget. Because Metro Council rightfully declined to raise taxes, Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Steve Conrad has said LMPD will respond by cutting three recruiting classes and ending ShotSpotter. “We will see bleeding, and unfortunately, it's not figurative," Conrad said. He went on to say that “The things that I guess I'

Eight months ago, after meaningful drops in homicides and shootings in Louisville, we first examined the role that self-initiated policing might play in reducing that violence. Self-initiated police activity typically includes things like pedestrian checks, building checks, occupied and unoccupied vehicle checks, foot patrols, and problem solving. One study of a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department experiment found that hot spots that received self-initiated enforcement e

As cities like Baltimore and St. Louis continue to struggle with rising homicides and non-fatal shootings, the release of the LMPD UCR Report for January-June 2018 shows Louisville is making progress. Though numbers remain above historic averages, January-June 2018 has had the fewest homicides since 2015 and fewest shootings since 2014. Additionally, Louisville’s three most violent police divisions - the First, Second, and Fourth - have all seen significant decreases in homic