FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Tuesday, January 10, 2023

RE:  Protesting Another Death in Louisville Jail

CONTACT:  Sonja DeVries, LSURJ ‭(502) 609-1837‬ or Angela Cooper, ACLU of KY angela@aclu-ky.org

Concerned community members will come together today, Tuesday, January 10 at 5pm for a vigil across from Louisville Metro Detention Center, at 6th and Jefferson, to mourn and protest the death of Mr Puckett, who died yesterday in LMDC custody.

"This is the 13th person who has died in LMDC in the last 14 months,” said Sonja DeVries, a Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice (LSURJ) organizer of the vigil. “As a community, unless we see the humanity of people in LMDC, and address the ongoing issues of holding people pretrial and the lack of quality, adequate healthcare, more people will die. We are all responsible.”

The ACLU of KY, Diverse Options Delegates, VOCAL-KY, the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression, Louisville Family Justice Advocates, Kentucky Equal Justice Center, Kentucky Committee to End Executions, All of Us or None, Black Leadership Action Coalition of Kentucky (BLACK), Kentucky Equal Justice Center, Jews for Justice, Jewish Family and Career Services, 490 Project, LSURJ and the Buddhist Justice Collective (BJC) are part of a broad coalition that has been working to get the issues at LMDC addressed.  These include a push to replace the current Wellpath provider with real healthcare in the jail, the use of alternatives to cash bail by judges, and getting police to stop arresting people who should get mental health and substance use services instead of being held in jail.

“Our practice of holding people in jail who have not been found guilty of the crime they are accused of puts people at risk for their lives”, said Carla F Wallace of LSURJ. “As a community, we need to focus on addressing the housing, job and community services needs of people instead of using pretrial detention to try and solve for poverty and racism.”

 "Angela Davis said, 'Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings' and disappeared people suffer and are in grave danger for their lives," said Angie Reed Garner of the Buddhist Justice Collective. "People need help, and we know how to help them. We must muster the political will to do it."

Press release from LMDC on the recent death of Mr Puckett https://docs.google.com/document/d/132r8kjYraglMJuYTRlgdiOsmam72SbzP99lw_HeusyE/edit?usp=sharing