Through integrity, compassion, and accountability, we will create a safer city and a thriving community. We already have specific goals in mind for 2025 and have made positive progress so far.

Our office’s priority categories for this year are G.R.A.C.E. in the Community, a new structure that will inform our work over the next year.

G represents our approach to Gun safety. We intend to ramp up, working more aggressively to build on the foundations set through some previously established programs and new target areas.

We plan to continue our work on the Prohibited Firearm Possessor program, the multi-agency effort to identify and strengthen gun cases where repeat offenders need some extra attention as we’re prepping case evidence for trial. It’s key to disrupting nexuses of crime in our neighborhoods. We’re also cracking down on persistent felony offenders.

Crime is not a career option in our city.

R is for Roadway safety. We worked extensively to retool the Fatal Accident Support Team and resurrect it from the past. Too many of our loved ones are going out and about in their day and ending up injured or worse due to distracted or impaired drivers. We’ve indicted nearly one FAST case a week every month of 2024, and we’re not slowing down in our pursuit of justice.

A stands for the pattern of Abuse of drugs and narcotics in our communities. In response to this issue, we have created a Narcotics unit in the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.

This unit will house specialty prosecutors and will focus exclusively on the scourge of drugs plaguing our communities. We will work with LMPD and local law enforcement to address abuse. We need to do more to stop the flow by putting everyone from street dealers to the heads of dangerous crime syndicates behind bars where they belong.

C is our office embracing the Community and collaborative stakeholders.

We have collaborated with local law enforcement agencies to develop a joint video presentation. This video is a simple, uniform, and informed way to share with survivors of crime and the families of victims about how we can assist in navigating what for many of them are the toughest times in their lives.

We also plan to continue our tradition of town halls. Under Commonwealth’s Attorney Whethers’ leadership, we began these community meetings for this office for the first time at the end of 2023. We plan to host these town halls across Jefferson County. We will bring together with our office the local Metro Council member, the chiefs of the Louisville Metro Police Department and our other local police departments, and select non-profit organizations, where applicable. This creates an unprecedented opportunity to directly address questions of public safety with concerned citizens.

E is for Educate our youth and share more insights about our laws. The more they understand, the better we can equip them in their part in the community as they become the next local leaders and take on other important positions in our workforce.

It also means building on what we started in 2024: going into select schools with law and government programs, with the welcome cooperation of Jefferson County Public Schools to help encourage students to explore career paths in the legal field.

We’re above the national average when it comes to our kids losing their lives in violent crimes. We’ve seen a rise in the number of young people participating in violence in our city, and we’ve seen the ages of those participating getting younger.

We will make a difference.