Louisville Police Chief Robert White is shaking up the department, reassigning many of his top commanders and expanding his narcotics unit to focus on street-level drugs and gangs, says the Louisville Courier-Journal. “What has always been a concern of mine is complacency,” White said. “We’re doing the same thing, getting the same results. And the results are not as good as they should be.”
City leaders and police union officials applauded the reorganization, particularly the renewed emphasis on street policing, with some saying the changes should have been made earlier. White was criticized when he adopted a more decentralized structure after taking over the merged county and city police departments in 2003. He disbanded a street-crimes unit and moving officers to divisions to act as “flex teams,” whose assignments vary depending on each division’s needs. White said that over time the flex units have been called on to tackle many types of crimes and are not always able to focus on gangs and street-level drug activity. Adding narcotics officers will allow that focus, he said.