The Synergy Project seeks to build police-community trust. Why critics call it 'Horrible.'

In June of 2019, nine months before Breonna Taylor was killed, and a year before protesters took to the streets demanding justice in her name, Louisville Metro Government launched the Synergy Project, an effort to address “challenges when it comes to police and community relations,” Mayor Greg Fischer said at the time.

Two years later, those challenges have grown and Fischer is seeking more than half a million dollars to awaken the program from a pandemic-induced slumber. But some local leaders say Synergy is not designed for a post 2020-world and they’re pushing Metro Council to redirect funds toward efforts they said would better accomplish the same goal. “I attended several Synergy meetings...and they were less than adequate,” Metro Council President David James said at a budget hearing last month. “They were horrible, quite frankly.”

James is among those supporting a change in the way the city builds trust between police and community members. The push for an alternative to Synergy is led by CLOUT, a local group of religious congregations “working together to solve critical community problems.”