Louisville Police to get Electronic Subpoenas in January

A decades-old problem of making sure Louisville Metro Police officers know when they need to be in court may be fixed, thanks to a new electronic subpoena system that will start next month.

Outgoing Mayor Jerry Abramson stood with Police Chief Robert White and other city officials Monday to announce the end of the county's cumbersome system of hand-delivering subpoenas to officers, an antiquated process that has helped cause thousands of felony and misdemeanor cases to be dismissed when police failed to appear.

“It will improve by leaps and bounds everything that we have been able to do in terms of subpoenaing,” said Abramson, noting the city is funding the new system through $480,000 in federal stimulus funds. “It will become a model for other communities statewide.”

In recent years, an estimated 10 percent of the approximately 100,000 paper subpoenas issued annually to Louisville police never reached officers, according to department officials.

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