WAVE: Mayor Greenberg closes out third year in office with double-digit drop in homicides
David Mattingly, WAVE
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg closes out his third year in office with a double-digit drop in homicides.
Greenberg’s office reports homicides are down 20% and non-fatal shootings have dropped almost 25%.
But Greenberg says there’s still much more to do.
Tracking gun violence through another bloody year, the city counts 111 dead and 256 wounded with two weeks to go in 2025.
It is the sixth straight year of triple-digit homicides, as Greenberg says, shooters continue to get younger and harder to reach.
“It’s really challenging, and the way that we’re trying to fight that is with early intervention and prevention,” Greenberg said. “We’ve got new programs for this year. We’re actually going into middle school students, because we saw that there were too many 14 to 24-year-olds that were killing each other. And so, we can’t wait until 16. That’s too late. We’ve got to get them early.”Speaking in a series of one-on-one interviews with local media, Mayor Craig Greenberg points to three years of continuous decline in violence during his administration.
Calling public safety both his biggest success and his biggest frustration, he also speaks of the difficulties in convincing the state legislature to allow the city to pass its own gun laws.
When asked what the problem was, he had a quick answer.
“I think it’s politics. I think there are some people that are unwilling to talk about any changes to our nation’s or our states’ gun laws because of outside political influences,” Greenberg said. “And that I think has been the biggest impediment to even getting those conversations started.”
But those conversations will be continuing next year.
