In what appears to be an egregious violation of the law and public trust, the Louisville Metro Police Department and Jefferson County have been accused of hiding and possibly deleting several hundred thousand documents related to a sex abuse scandal involving alleged child sexual abuse by two officers. The allegedly hidden documents were uncovered by the Louisville Courier-Journal through its dogged pursuit of open records requests.
The underlying case involves two LMPD officers accused of sexually abusing participants of the Explorer Scouts program, which is aimed at children who are interested in law enforcement. According to the Courier-Journal, requests for relevant records were met with statements that the records either did not exist or had been physically removed and provided to the FBI. Later open records litigation revealed that LMPD had those documents and hundreds of thousands more. Those records have apparently been lost or deleted.
The LMPD has also faced significant local and national public backlash due to its handling of Breonna Taylor’s shooting earlier this year.
This case, like many others including the Larry Nassar scandal at MSU, show the importance of open record laws and robust investigative journalism.
