A Louisville Metro Police lieutenant is asking a judge to overturn a disciplinary ruling that found he mishandled the aftermath of a fellow officer grabbing a homeless man by the throat outside a downtown hotel. Lt. Caleb Stewart, who leads LMPD's Downtown Area Patrol, filed the appeal after the Louisville Metro Police Merit Board upheld findings that he violated department policy, though it cut his original 20-day suspension down to 10.
The case traces back to April 2023, when Officer Jay Moss grabbed a homeless man by the throat and took him to the ground outside the downtown Marriott hotel, according to WAVE News. The man had been accused of stealing a soda from the hotel, and he was never charged with a crime. A hotel security officer who witnessed the encounter told Stewart he was concerned the force used was excessive, reporting that the man's face was turning red and that he appeared not to be getting sufficient air.
Stewart supervised Moss at the time and counseled him for failing to turn on his body camera during the encounter, per the station's report. Rather than immediately reporting the incident up the chain of command, Stewart solicited opinions from LMPD leadership on whether Moss's actions needed to be reported at all, and he believed disciplinary action against Moss would be punitive and damage morale, the outlet reported.
Chief Accuses Lieutenant of Failing to Escalate
Then-Assistant Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel accused Stewart of failing to investigate Moss's actions, report the use of force, and elevate the incident through proper channels, and she suspended him for 20 days without pay in 2024, according to the same account. The Merit Board later found that Stewart had indeed violated department policy in how he handled the use-of-force investigation, though it reduced his suspension to 10 days.
Under LMPD's standard operating procedures for use-of-force reporting, supervisors are required to conduct an immediate administrative inquiry and push documentation up the chain of command whenever they witness or learn of a reportable force tactic — regardless of whether the affected person files a formal complaint, per the Standard Operating Procedures cited by ProPublica. A separate review by the Louisville Office of Inspector General found Stewart in substantial compliance with ethical standards but only partial compliance with administrative incident-reporting procedures, according to the Louisville Office of Inspector General.
According to the Louisville Metro Government Office of the Inspector General's 2025 Annual Report, the agency is independent and investigates community complaints against LMPD.
Stewart's attorney, Todd Smith, has argued the Merit Board hearing was riddled with unsupported findings and procedural violations. Stewart himself has accused the Office of Inspector General of interfering in the case through off-record conversations with the Merit Board, and he has separately accused Chief Paul Humphrey and LMPD of witness tampering, per WAVE's reporting. PSU investigators were unable to locate the homeless man after receiving the investigation, according to the same report, leaving a central witness effectively unreachable.
A Chief's Testimony and a Harassment Case Collide
Complicating the timeline, Chief Humphrey signed the findings letter against Stewart just days before Major Shannon Lauder testified in a separate matter — Lauder was found responsible in May 2025 for a pool-party sexual-harassment complaint stemming from a 2020 incident involving another officer, WAVE reported. Todd Lewis, referenced in the same coverage, said Stewart's actions clearly pointed toward the need for an investigation. An LMPD spokesperson has said Chief Humphrey stands behind the findings the Merit Board upheld, while Mayor Craig Greenberg's spokesperson referred questions to LMPD's statement. Greenberg is also named as a defendant in the complaint, according to the outlet.
Stewart's appeal now heads to Jefferson Circuit Court under Kentucky Revised Statutes § 67C.323, which gives officers 30 days from a Merit Board's final order to challenge the ruling in court, with Kentucky's statutes naming the board as the statutory respondent. The board's review of Stewart's case stretched across evidentiary hearings in May, July, and August 2025 before its counsel submitted formal findings for consideration at a June 22, 2026 meeting, according to records posted by Louisville Metro Government.
Enforcement Record Draws Separate Scrutiny
Stewart's role atop Downtown Area Patrol has drawn its own controversy apart from the Moss case. Body camera footage from September 27, 2024, showed Stewart approaching a visibly pregnant homeless woman under a downtown overpass in the rain and stating he did not believe she was in labor, shortly before ordering city workers to dispose of her mattress, according to The Guardian. The woman gave birth later that same day after being transported by ambulance, and her street-camping citation was ultimately dismissed. Chief Humphrey has since called that citation decision an error based on sound reasoning that happened to be wrong, per WAVE's account.
The citation was issued under Kentucky's House Bill 5, the Safer Kentucky Act, which took effect in July 2024 and made unlawful camping on public streets or sidewalks a violation carrying a fine of up to $250 for a first offense. Statewide court data reviewed by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy found 425 unlawful camping charges filed under the law between July 2024 and July 2025 across 30 counties, with Jefferson County accounting for 41.7 percent of all first-offense citations statewide — by far the highest concentration in Kentucky. Despite the controversy, Stewart received Louisville Tourism's Partner of the Year award in October 2025 after a nomination from Deputy Mayor Nicole George praising his downtown encampment enforcement, a decision that drew criticism from local unhoused advocacy groups.
According to the Kentucky Housing Corporation, Kentucky's K-Count measures people experiencing homelessness on a single night, making it a snapshot rather than a year-round total.
The Merit Board, for its part, characterized the homeless man's comments during the 2023 hotel incident as inappropriate and provocative but not a genuine threat, and the man had mental illness and no permanent housing, according to WAVE's reporting. The case also lands amid a broader reckoning over LMPD accountability: a 2023 U.S. Department of Justice investigation concluded the department engaged in a pattern of constitutional violations, including excessive force and discriminatory enforcement against vulnerable populations, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. A federal judge dismissed a proposed consent decree in January 2026 after the department withdrew its support, leaving Louisville to rely on its own locally managed reform plan, as reported by Police1.
