Officer Watley

Officer Watley was a normal, uber-aggro street cop in the highlands until Louisville's second big wave of graffiti hit around 1998. Within months, he was hot on the trail of local (and regional) artists that were vandalizing the hell out of the area from Taylorsville Road to downtown. For a couple of years, Bardstown Road was plastered with stickers, tags, and even a few throwups. As the graffiti continued to grow, so did Watley's reach, with most people recognizing him as the cop in town who knew about that sort of thing. He proceeded in 99/00 to harass people at school and home, and even a couple at work while following up on graffiti leads. His sources were frequently stupid kids that ratted each other out, but he frequently put things together due to a very lax security culture involving local message boards (which he trolled). Whether he had help doing this or not is unknown, but an Officer Seimens (no joke) was also aware of local websites, even as far as mentioning Dead In The Dirt by name in a confrontation with some rowdy vandals...

However, Officer Watley's interaction with punks and hardcore kids didn't end at graffiti. During much of his time as the so-called brain behind Louisville's anti-graffiti measures, he remained a beat cop in the highlands. On many occasions, he handed out citations and tickets to kids putting up flyers along the road. Along with the "old man with the dog" in the Deer Park area, and various city workers, the practice of nailing punk flyers to every vertical surface on Bardstown Road had pretty much died as of 2002. Nothing would stay up for more than a day or two, if even that long. This aggressive stance was probably helped along by the massive amount of graffiti in the area at the time. Watley also proceeded to stop and search kids that looked punk for no other reason than they were punk, and stopping some black punks (on multiple occasions) because "their kind" looked out of place in the white-bread highlands. Presumably, it wasn't just non-white punks that were treated in such a manner.

For instance, he and a partner, both dressed in plainclothes, suddenly got out of a parked car next to two people hanging up flyers for a gay-rights-related activist event at a nearby venue. Watley and his partner seized the flyers and while Watley harangued the two people, the partner perused the offending material.

"What are they about?" Watley asked his partner.

There was a pause, and then his partner said, in a slow and confused tone, "Some kind of gay show..." (You probably had to be there to appreciate the humor of the situation.)

Watley was (is?) certainly a member of the Louisville Police Department that no one will miss.

In late 2004, his name hadn't been heard much in punk/hc circles. Many assumed that he had moved on. But he appeared on TV presenting graffiti documents to the city's Board Of Aldermen, showing photos of graffiti, graffiti raids on people's houses, booking photos (with their names and all), restitution paperwork from court, and all kinds of scary stuff. Not only that, but non-punk/hc kids from Phoenix Hill, Germantown, Smoketown and other neighborhoods in the 1st District have also reported negative experiences with Watley.