Louisville Metro Council is expected to decide Thursday night whether the city is willing to pay $350,000 to help monitor bias in police officer interactions this year.
The data analytics company Sigma Squared is promising to help the Louisville Metro Police Department identify any bias or discrimination in police stops. They’d help LMPD track officer interactions — traffic stops, pedestrian stops and uses of force — and then test that data for signs of bias using formulas developed by social scientists and economists. The company says it will also help LMPD find the "root causes" of the bias.
Sigma Squared provides a dashboard where command staff can see the number of stops in a given area of Louisville and the outcomes: whether they resulted in a search and seizure, an arrest or nothing at all. The program analyzes to determine if there's bias is done automatically.
LMPD officials hope better data and analysis of traffic stops will improve crime-fighting strategies and help their reform efforts. The U.S. Department of Justice released a scathing report in 2023 that, among other things, alleged LMPD officers routinely stopped Black drivers for minor traffic violations more often than white drivers. The DOJ also alleged Black drivers were twice as likely to have their cars searched.
Deputy Chief Emily McKinley said the proposed partnership with Sigma Squared could help improve public trust following that DOJ report.
“We take the allegations very seriously, and we want to show the public that we take it seriously and we are taking our own proactive steps to look at the data we have and figure out how we can protect our city and serve our community more effectively,” she said.
McKinley said LMPD has been working on addressing concerns about policing that came to the forefront during the 2020 protests. Being able to show the public what the data is saying can be more effective than “just telling the community, ‘Hey, trust us, everything is going just fine,’” she said.
LMPD does not have a timeline for releasing reports on the data publicly, but McKinley said the goal is to provide the information in “some sort of regular format.”
Sigma Squared was founded in 2020 by Harvard economists Roland Fryer and Tanaya Devi in the wake of nationwide social justice protests. Those protests were sparked by high-profile police killings, including the shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
At the time, many companies began looking inward at their hiring and promotion practices. Sigma Squared offered them a way to understand whether their race and gender disparities were due to bias and discrimination, or something else.
Fryer, who’s researched disparities in policing, said it seemed logical to adapt their software for use by police agencies.
“There’s no entity I know of who needs to distinguish disparity and bias more than police departments, particularly pedestrian and traffic stops,” he said.
Fryer said Sigma Squared’s software uses tests developed by social scientists that can help determine if particular results are motivated by bias.
One test, known as the Becker outcome test, looks at the “productivity” of a person’s actions. In other words, are officers’ disproportionate stops of Black residents actually leading to arrests or contraband seizures, or are they unproductive. Another way the company’s software analyzes stop data is through the threshold test: Are officers using the same threshold for stopping people of different races and genders?
Fryer said he thinks the data, and the transparency it provides, can help police departments and residents get on the same page.
“Perhaps I’m just an academic and too hopeful, but I think simple things like this and education on both sides can help us all be more clear with what the numbers are telling us,” he said. “If we are, that will build trust between the community and LMPD.”
As part of its analysis, Sigma Squared’s software also promises to help police departments understand the root causes of bias, whether it's coming from hiring preferences, stereotyping or the policies and procedures themselves.
Fryer said LMPD would be one of the first police department’s in the country to contract with Sigma Squared. The New Orleans Police Department, which is currently under a federal consent decree, has said it plans to contract with the tech company.
Louisville’s consent decree agreement is yet to be approved by a judge.
Improving public safety
For years, LMPD officers have had to document any time they stop a person in public. In 2023, the department moved to a new records management system and began tracking more information about officer interactions, including demographic information like race and gender as well as searches, seizures and arrests.
McKinley said the Sigma Squared software will allow them to see in real time the impact of LMPD’s policing strategies. There’s the bias detection element, but it’s also about improving public safety, she said.
“If there’s a significant amount of stops or searches that officers are conducting that are not producing anything, then why are we doing that?” she said. “Having something … to give us that direction is going to be very beneficial and timely when it comes to affecting crime.”
The $350,000 contract with Sigma Squared would allow LMPD to access their data dashboard and analytics for one year, through the end of 2025.
Louisville Metro Council Member Dan Seum, Jr., a Republican representing District 13 in the South End and chair of the Public Safety Committee, is sponsoring the legislation to fund the contract.
Seum said he was approached by LMPD and Mayor Craig Greenberg’s office to take a look at the proposal. After talking with department leaders and officers, he decided the goals would be worth the price tag, he said.
“They want to show that they’re doing the right thing,” Seum said of LMPD officers. “This does it. And if it don’t, then it’s going to be corrected.”
Seum said the city needs to quell some fears among the public, and being transparent about what’s happening with traffic and pedestrian stops can do that.
“I want to know, you want to know, so I think this will be a good tool,” he said.
At a meeting of Metro Council’s Labor and Economic Development Committee last week, council members agreed to move the contract to a final vote with little discussion.
The only thing that raised eyebrows was that the Sigma Squared contract is sole-sourced, meaning there wasn’t a competitive bidding process where other companies could be considered. Some council members, as well as LMPD, contend that Sigma Squared is the only company offering this type of data analysis of potential bias.
Still, District 7 Independent Paula McCraney recommended the contract be moved onto old business for Thursday’s meeting. That means the contract won’t be voted on in a block of non-controversial legislation, called the consent calendar. There will be a separate vote and an opportunity for discussion.
“For the public, when you talk about sole-sourcing in the government, people need to understand that it’s appropriate,” McCraney said. “I just think that speaking to it in the council meeting would be really wise.”
Members of the public can sign up to give their thoughts on the contract, and any other item on the agenda, at the meeting by calling the Metro Council Clerk’s Office at (502) 574-3902 ahead of the meeting on Thursday at 5 p.m.
