Paste BN Network investigation finds 2 Kentucky sheriff's officers were once KKK members

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Racial justice advocates are raising concerns after an investigation by the Courier Journal, part of the Paste BN Network, revealed two current Louisville sheriff's officers were once members of a Ku Klux Klan faction of law enforcement officers.

The officers – one a captain and the other a deputy in the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office – were members of a KKK faction exposed 36 years ago in a civil rights lawsuit filed by a Black couple burned out of their home in a previously all-white neighborhood.

Robert and Martha Marshall were firebombed out of their home the day after they moved in with their three children in 1985. Klan emblems were placed on poles and trees outside their home. Two months later, the Klan held a rally two blocks away vowing that no Black people would live in the community.

The Klan group – Confederate Officers Patriotic Squad, or COPS – was not accused in the arson, but attorneys for the Marshalls were allowed to question Klan members in depositions to identify possible perpetrators.

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Eventually, two 20-year-olds and a juvenile pleaded guilty to arson, but police and prosecutors said they found no evidence linking them to the Klan.

To protect the officers' rights of freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment, a federal judge sealed the depositions, and the names of most of the members were never disclosed. The Courier Journal sought to unseal the documents but lost.

But earlier this month, a former law enforcement officer provided the newspaper with documents from the lawsuit that identified Mike Loran, a captain in the sheriff’s criminal division, and Gary Fischer, a deputy who is assigned to auto inspections, as former Klan members.

"Once you have been a member of an organization founded on hate … you cannot be trusted to be in a position of authority where you are required to protect and serve the rights and lives of all people equally," said Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League.

Loran declined to comment. Fischer did not reply to a request for comment. 

Fischer was one of four officers who acknowledged in an interview with The Courier Journal in 1986 that he had been in the Klan faction that was led by County Officer Alex Young, who claimed there were about 20 members.

In a statement, Jefferson County Sheriff John Aubrey said he found the disclosure "shocking and very disappointing."

"I have always tried to emphasize that the sheriff’s office has a responsibility to serve all citizens equally, with dignity and respect," he said. "And it’s very important that our citizens feel they can trust our personnel to do that. For that reason, it was heartbreaking for me."

Aubrey said he interviewed both men, and they expressed "sincere remorse" for their actions decades ago, calling them "a terrible mistake" when they were young officers. 

He said he has asked his internal affairs unit to request copies of both men's personnel files from their previous departments.

Aubrey promised a "full disclosure of our findings and any subsequent actions."

'Consequences must be swift and severe'

Civil rights advocates say despite the passage of time, they find it disconcerting that former Klan members are serving in law enforcement.

Reynolds called the revelation "extremely disturbing" and said the “consequences must be swift and severe.” 

"At a time when fear and concerns about police bias with respect to the Black community could not be higher … this absolutely is unacceptable," she said. 

Michael Aldridge, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said it is a "grave concern" and a gross violation of the public's trust.

Both Reynolds and Aldridge said the fact this happened decades ago is irrelevant.

Loran, now 69, worked for the old Louisville Police Department at the time. Fischer, 70, was a Jefferson County police officer.

The Courier Journal's review of their sheriff’s department personnel files showed no complaints since they joined the office, Fischer in 2004 and Loran in 2006. They have received commendations for conduct such as patrolling at parades, records show.

Deposition summaries reveal more former KKK members

According to the deposition summaries provided by the Marshalls' attorneys, famed civil rights litigator Morris Dees and Franklin Circuit Court judge Phillip Shepherd, Officer Robert Snyder, a Vietnam veteran, said in a statement taken Dec. 9, 1985, that he was a Klan member for one year and joined because he liked the KKK's "anti-communist stance."

Snyder said Loran and two other officers were members.

Snyder said meetings were “essentially poker games and shooting pool” and he quit because he couldn’t accept "KKK racial and religious prejudice."

Snyder died in 2006 at age 60.

According to the summaries, Fischer said in a deposition that he took the KKK oath and went to one meeting in the 1970s.

Fischer said in the 1986 interview with the Courier Journal that he thought of the Klan-affiliated group as “more or less a social organization” and he had gone to a small Indiana town about 10 years earlier to be initiated. He said he had no further involvement.

“I wrote it off as a bad experience and as an error in judgment,” he said at the time.

Retired police officer Darlene Crawford, 61, told The Courier Journal this week that when she worked with Fischer on the county police force in 1985, he refused to get in a vehicle with her because she is Black and called her a racial slur.

She said they later worked together in the sheriff’s office and he never apologized.

Reynolds said the passage of time is not evidence that attitudes and perceptions that inspired police to join a Klan faction have changed.

"Even if they have,” she said, "there are some jobs you simply forfeit the right to have." 

"No one would ask Jewish members of our community to tolerate a Nazi with a badge," Reynolds said. "Why should we be any different?"

Lonita Baker, a Black attorney who litigates civil rights cases and who represents the family of police shooting victim Breonna Taylor, said "everyone deserves a shot at redemption.”

But she said Aubrey needs to investigate the two officers' service in law enforcement from a “new lens now knowing their prior affiliation.”

ACLU rethinks its support of Klan members

Aided by ACLU's Kentucky chapter, which said it was defending the constitutional right to freedom of association, Young initially refused to provide records to the Marshalls' attorneys but complied after he was found in contempt.

The ACLU of Kentucky now condemns the sheriff's office for employing two former Klan members.

But 36 years ago, it defended the Klan's right not to disclose the names of police Klan members on the grounds it could result in the government unfairly forcing marginalized groups to give up their membership lists.

Executive Director Michael Aldridge said this week the ACLU's role in filing a brief for the Klan has been "a sobering moment for the ACLU-KY and has caused some introspection on the ways in which we have contributed to a system of white supremacy.

"Faced with the same facts and circumstances as in 1985, we would not elect to use time and resources today to file that brief."

The controversy came seven years after the ACLU nationally outraged some of its supporters by defending the First Amendment rights of Nazis to march through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie.

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.