Previous Work

We filed suit against Louisville Metro Police Department based on what we believe are violations of state record retention law and the Open Records Act. Kentucky state law dictates that government agencies must retain records for certain periods of time, including a requirement to document destruction of records at the end of a retention period. The 490 Project has evidence of a complaint against an LPMD officer, but no record or certificate of destruction of this complaint exists, despite multiple open records requests. A link to the complaint will be shared once made public online.

Open records are an important tool that the public and journalists can use to uncover corruption. Failure to comply with record retention policies allows LMPD to cover up bad behavior – to operate in the dark without accountability. Our intent is to gain transparency into our city government and ensure proper maintenance of records. The public has a right to know what our local agencies are doing and verifying their verbal stories with records will bolster public trust.

October 5th, 2022

Lawsuit Filed Against LMPD

Article - The Courier Journal

Article - Louisville Public Media

Article - WAVE3

January 9th, 2023

We identified a Louisville Metro Council ordinance that outlines how the city should handle record retention for all government agencies. While researching policies, we identified multiple agencies that may be in violation of this ordinance. We led the community to demand the chair of Metro Council’s Government Oversight and Audit Committee, Councilman Brent Ackerson (District 26), to initiate a formal audit into the city’s record retention policies. In January of 2023, the Metro Council voted to approve this ordinance and an audit is currently underway.

Audit Began into LMPD’s Recordkeeping Policies

Article - The Courier Journal

Note: this section is currently under construction and more of our previous work will be shared here later.