Louisville cops acquitted of criminal charges in the death of Breonna Taylor

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky: Two white police officers who shot at the apartment of Breonna Taylor, a black medical worker, will not be prosecuted for her death because their use of force was justified, and a third was charged with endangering their neighbors said the Kentucky attorney general. on Wednesday (September 23).

Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced the Louisville grand jury decision at a press conference as protesters against racial injustice and police brutality gathered on the streets of Kentucky’s largest city.

The protests were largely peaceful. But about a dozen people were arrested in a clash between hundreds of protesters and dozens of heavily armed law enforcement officers in riot gear on the outskirts of downtown Louisville.

Former detective Brett Hankison was indicted on three counts of first degree senseless endangerment, a crime that ranks among the lowest felony level in Kentucky and carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison.

Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the Taylor family, said it was “outrageous” that none of the officers were criminally charged with causing Taylor’s death.

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Taylor, 26, was murdered in front of her armed boyfriend shortly after midnight March 13 inside their Louisville apartment after Hankison and his two colleagues broke in with a search warrant.

The other two officers, Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were not charged because they were justified under Kentucky law to return fire after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot them, wounding Mattingly in the thigh, Cameron said.

“There is no question that this is an emotional and heartbreaking case,” Cameron, a black Republican, said at a news conference.

Governor Andy Beshear asked Cameron to release all the evidence in the case so that the public could better understand the outcome of the investigation.

“Everyone can and should be informed,” Beshear said. “Those who feel frustration, pain, deserve to know more.”

Hankison fired his gun 10 times. Some of the bullets went through Taylor’s apartment to the adjacent apartment number 3, where a man, a pregnant woman and a child were at home.

There was no “conclusive” evidence that any of Hankison’s bullets hit Taylor, Cameron said. The grand jury charged him with endangering neighbors for no reason, Cameron said.

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Organizers of the protest expressed frustration at the result.

Hundreds of protesters stormed out of downtown Louisville’s Jefferson Square Park and marched through the streets shouting, “Get out of the houses, into the streets!”

In a suburban area outside the city center, protesters threw bottles of water at police, who responded by firing pepper balls into the crowd. There was shoving and shoving between the two sides, and some protesters smashed business windows in the area.

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“If Brett Hankison’s behavior was a meaningless danger to people in neighboring apartments, then it should also have been a meaningless danger in Breonna Taylor’s apartment,” Crump said. “In fact, it should have been ruled a senseless murder!”

Prior to the announcement, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer announced a 72-hour curfew for the city beginning at 9 pm “I urge everyone to choose a peaceful and lawful protest,” Fischer said. In a subsequent press conference, he said that the US Department of Justice was continuing to investigate whether federal laws were violated, including possible civil rights violations.

“It is clear that there are policies and procedures that need to be changed, because Breonna Taylor should still be alive,” he said. “Let’s go back to each other, not to each other, in this moment of opportunity.”

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Despite having a court order allowing them to enter the premises without warning, the three officers involved knocked on Taylor’s apartment door and announced their presence outside, which was corroborated by a neighbor, Cameron said. Getting no response, “they went through the door,” he said.

Mattingly went in first, and at the end of a hallway he saw Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, with Walker pointing a gun.

Walker fired, hitting Mattingly in the thigh. Mattingly returned fire and his colleagues began firing shortly after, Cameron said.

Six bullets hit Taylor, she said, contradicting reports that she had been hit five times. Ballistics investigators found that only one shot, fired by Cosgrove, was fatal, Cameron said.

In June, the Louisville Metro Police Department fired Hankison with Acting Police Chief Robert Schroeder writing that Hankison “showed extreme disregard for the value of human life” when he “shot blindly and senselessly” at the home of Taylor.

The department reassigned Mattingly and Cosgrove to administrative duties. Local media reported that Hankison turned himself in to authorities Wednesday at an area detention center and was released on $ 15,000 bond. WAVE-TV quoted a Cincinnati-based lawyer for Hankison as saying the former detective would plead not guilty.

Obtaining a warrant as part of an investigation into a drug ring, police told a judge that they believed one of the men suspected of selling drugs had used Taylor’s apartment to receive packages.

Taylor had previously dated an alleged drug dealer but had broken ties with him, according to her family.

She and Walker were in bed when police broke down their door with a battering ram shortly after midnight, representatives for the families said.

Louisville agreed to pay $ 12 million to Taylor’s family to settle a wrongful death lawsuit, Mayor Fischer announced earlier this month. He said Wednesday that the agreement was intended to “begin the healing process.”