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Bowling Green Preparing for DOJ Investigator Visit Next Month

Bowling Green Police Department

The mayor of Bowling Green says the city continues to examine how it conducts hiring for all of its departments.  

The move was prompted by a federal investigationinto how the city makes hiring decisions related to its police force.  

A Department of Justice investigator is scheduled to visit the city on August 13th.  Mayor Bruce Wilkerson says he believes it’s important for the city’s minority communities to see a police department they can relate to.

“How better together trust within that community if they see someone that looks like them or can speak their language, then they don’t become as such us versus them mentality.”

Wilkerson says he’s not sure of the timeline the process will take beyond next month’s meeting with the investigator.

“I think it’s just a preliminary visit on the 13th, I don’t expect him to be here on that day, beyond that he’ll tell us.”
A letter from the Department of Justice to the city said only five-percent of the city’s sworn police personnel are African-American. Wilkerson said he wasn’t sure what timeline the federal investigation would follow beyond next month’s visit from the D.O.J.

Kevin is the News Director at WKU Public Radio. He has been with the station since 1999, and was previously the Assistant News Director, and also served as local host of Morning Edition. He is a broadcast journalism graduate of WKU, and has won numerous awards for his reporting and feature production. Kevin grew up in Radcliff, Kentucky and currently lives in Glasgow.
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