Louisville Metro Police Chief Erika Shields says the city's investment in public safety is paying off with a reduction in violent crime and she's hoping to continue that trend with proposed investments in next year's budget.Mayor Greg Fischer's proposed budget allocates $210,460,700. That's up from the $185,295,900 approved in last year's budget.Shields went before the Metro Council budget committee Wednesday evening to speak about where the increased funds will be spent."Violent crime for the city is down 15%, overall crime for the city is down 7%, and shootings are down 38%. This is huge and this means we have been in some of the correct places locking up some of the correct individuals," Shields said.According to Shields, partnerships with other city agencies and technologies like shot spotters and license plate readers have helped bring those numbers down. Shields acknowledged that homicides this year have not followed the same trends."I'm under no illusions. We have a long way to go. We are struggling with our homicide rate. We are at 67 homicides — up approximately 10% year over year," Shields said.One area where the department is hoping to increase spending is DNA testing. A backlog at the Kentucky State Police lab forced the department to begin outsourcing its testing. The Metro Council approved $700,000 last year for DNA testing."We submitted 323 pieces of evidence, which impacted 31 different homicides. It led to multiple arrests including the high profile Tyree Smith, the young man who was shot and killed at the bus stop," Shields said.Shields is asking for $1.7 million dollars for testing in next year's budget. She hopes to begin using the testing to look into recent cold cases.Councilwoman Dona Purvis wanted to know what's being spent to help address the increase in street racing and reckless drivers — citing the high number of complaints from her constituents."Traffic enforcement is really really deficient here because we simply just don't have the people and I hate it," Shields said.The department is currently down 300 positions, but investments are being made in recruitment. The department is now offering an $8,000 hiring incentive and a $3,000 relocation incentive."We've hired year to date 48 individuals, but we are since the pay incentive and relocation incentive we are seeing a dramatic uptick in the number of applicants," Shields said.Under a three-year hiring plan partially funded in this budget, the department will host three recruitment classes a year with the goal of reaching 1,200 officers by fiscal year 25.The department is also continuing its targeted advertising in other cities. The department's next hiring event will be in Chicago. The capital budget proposes $6 million dollars for the first phase of a new LMPD training facility. In recent years, the department has been forced to contract with outside agencies."We've been very creative in finding ways to find places to train, but it's always kind of a hodgepodge and us putting it together as we go along," Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said.The chief is also focused on continuing to improve transparency through the department's new Accountability and Improvement Bureau. The bureau is hiring civilian and academic positions to oversee the training academy and review body camera footage to intercept problematic behavior.'This department did not leverage the technology it had for multiple years and we are in this space. Someone needs to be sitting there and actually looking and auditing this stuff," Shields said.