Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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THE REV. KEVIN COSBY says. He went to Benedict College in South Carolina to study computer science. It was expensive. He returned to Louisville and moved in with his father, who now has a job at the Reynolds packing company. ���My dad is here now, turning his life around,��� Hall says. ���All my little brothers on my daddy���s side, all of us been locked up, all of us are convicted felons. Maybe I can be the one to do something. And when they see me change, maybe they can change.��� From Simmons, Hall hopes to transfer to U of L and maybe try out for the football team. He���d love to be a pharmacist because, he says, ���I know a lot about pills ��� what���s in ���em, what number is on ���em, how many milligrams.��� His current record will prevent that, however, even though he says he���ll be of probation in fve months. ���I���ve really messed up my life and can���t do what I want to do,��� he says. ���Labor, hard work, work on computers ��� that���s about all I can do.��� Step one: getting his voting rights back. ���Even if I can never get my record expunged, I���m still willing to try to do things right. School is hard, but the consequences are lovely,��� he says. ���But the pull of the streets is always there. Tey accept felons on the streets. Ain���t no resumes or background checks. I know I can be successful there.��� I ask him what the chances are that he won���t go back to the streets. He guesses 70 percent. His breakdown: 50 percent because he wants to do something diferent, 10 percent because he���s in school, 10 percent because he���s a dad and 10 percent because his friends tell him he���s the one who can make it. I tell him that adds up to 80 percent. ���Eighty percent,��� he says. T he ofcer asks that I refer to her simply as DD because she���s a ���highvalue target��� and a single mother with a three-year-old son. DD, who lives in Oldham County, works second shift at the second division, which is in Park DuValle. She���s 26, hired by LMPD in March 2011, sworn in that October. Twenty-eight of the 62 criminal homicides in Louisville in 2012, or 45 percent, happened in the West End. ���By far the most violent division in the department,��� she says. She mainly works west of 34th street and north of Broadway. Country music plays at a low volume inside the police cruiser. Between the driver and passenger seats is a book about becoming a ���completely committed follower of Jesus.��� A rack above her head holds a shotgun. Te Panasonic Toughbook���s screen fashes with cop jargon. When we roll past Alm Food Mart on Broadway, DD says, ���He���s been robbed so many times that I told him to get a gun.��� It���s a pretty slow night. Te most interesting run is for a woman who shattered a Grey Goose bottle over her boyfriend���s head. ���Tere are some great people down here. But those who cause the problems have no sense of accountability,��� DD says. ���I don���t want to say I don���t believe in these people, and I don���t want to get political, but something isn���t right when I see a guy with $1,000 wrapped around a food-stamp card.��� She tells me she picked up extra hours working security at a warehouse so she could provide a nice Christmas for her boy. ���Nothing is given to me. I���m divorced and my ex pays no child support,��� she says. ���Some of these people need to get of the government payroll, and then they���d have to do something.��� DD, who has a blond ponytail and is 5���2��� and 140 pounds ���on a heavy day,��� tells me a story about a 14-year-old nicknamed ���Lil��� Doodie.��� She says she knows he killed somebody but that no witnesses would talk to police. ���At his house I said, ���Let me see your hands. And if your hands have a gun, I���ll (expletive) kill you,������ DD says. ���He told me if I kept showing up on his scene that I���d end up on a T-shirt.��� Since then, she says, Lil��� Doodie stole a car, crashed it and will likely spend the rest of his life as a vegetable. ���When somebody is murdered, you hear about what a great father they were or that they were a straight-A student. Seven times out of 10, they were not trying to get their life on track. And that���s being generous,��� DD says. ���It���s kind of your obligation as a parent to say that, but it gives the impression that these are random acts of violence.��� CONTINUED ON PAGE 126 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4 5

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