All the atrocities against black people committed by the police are enraging, but this one in particular is doing something to me. It’s just raw, and visceral anger. I don’t even wish that these 3 men get arrested. I wish they all get Colombian neckties on camera, like on some snuff film shit.
The details of this shit and just how brazen and complicit the whole department is just too much.
Street justicei hate to say this but they wont ever be afraid until they know its consequence for their actions.
they wont be in danger and neither will their family.
and most lawmakers are getting paid under the table to look the other way and defend this type shit.
how do you combat that if no one is making them feel heat?
Not now"Beyonce wrote"
On Wednesday, nearly 90 days after three plainclothes Louisville Metropolitan Police officers barged into 26-year-old Breonna Taylor’s apartment, shooting her eight times, LMPD finally released the incident report from the night of her killing.
As the Louisville Courier Journal reports, the document was almost completely blank. And the little information it does contain includes outright lies.
“It lists her injuries as ‘none,’ even though she was shot at least eight times and died on her hallway floor in a pool of blood,” writes the Courier Journal, citing attorneys for Taylor’s family. The report also says that there was no forced entry, despite the fact police used a battering ram to break down Taylor’s door.
The section marked “narrative”—where officers had a chance to explain, in detail, why their drug raid that night ended with Taylor’s death—is reduced to a short note: “PIU investigation.”
At best, the report shows a stunning, dangerous level of incompetence at the LMPD. At worst, the glaring omissions point toward a cover-up: dodging accountability by committing little to paper.
LMPD said the errors in the report were due to the reporting program.
“Inaccuracies in the report are unacceptable to us, and we are taking immediate steps to correct the report and to ensure the accuracy of incident reports going forward,” the department said in a statement.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer took a harsher tone, calling the report “unacceptable” and citing it as an example of why public trust in the police has eroded.
The Courier Journal, which is suing LMPD for the release of its investigative file of Taylor’s fatal shooting, also spoke out about the report. A counsel for the local paper called the document “proof that LMPD continues to make a mockery of transparency.”
Despite weeks of protests over Taylor’s killing, no actions have been taken aside from reassigning the three narcotics officers who executed the “no-knock” search warrant at her home. The March 13 raid was part of an investigation into two alleged drug dealers who lived more than 10 miles away from Taylor. Police claimed that Taylor was helping traffic drugs by accepting packages for an ex-boyfriend, despite the Louisville postal inspector telling WDRB “no packages of interest” were sent to Taylor’s home.
Police accounts of the raid also conflict with those of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who says he mistook the officers for intruders because they did not announce themselves before forcefully entering her apartment. LMPD claims the three officers, Sgt. John Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, and Brett Hankison, announced their presence despite obtaining the “no-knock” warrant. Walker, who shot back at the plainclothes officers, was initially charged with attempted murder of a police officer. Those charges were dismissed last month.
Mattingly, Hankison (who is currently also facing a sexual assault investigation), and Cosgrove have been on administrative reassignment since the investigation into her death began. This week, LMPD announced that the detective who requested the warrant, Joshua Jaynes, was also reassigned.
Breonna Taylor’s neighbor has filed a lawsuit against the officers from the Louisville Police Department who shot and killed the 26-year-old in her home in March, alleging that the cops also “blindly fired” in their apartment.
Chelsey Napper, who lived next to Taylor, says that the police sprayed gunfire into her apartment with a total disregard for the value of human life, according to a report from the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Napper’s lawsuit adds that she was pregnant at the time of the incident and had a child in the home, and that someone in her household was almost shot by the police.
From Courier-Journal:
Napper has named three officers in her suit—Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove—and is seeking damages and a jury trial.“A bullet that was shot from the defendant police officers’ gun flew inches past Cody Etherton’s head while he was in the hallway of Chelsey Napper’s apartment,” it states.
The suit claims that gunshots struck objects in Napper’s living room, dining room, kitchen and hallway. Her sliding glass door also was shattered, as seen in photos provided by Taylor’s family’s attorney, Sam Aguiar.
It also accuses the officers of failing to use “sound reasonable judgment” when firing “blind shots into multiple homes.”
Breonna Taylor’s family has also sued the three cops for wrongful death in the shooting of the young woman who would have turned 27 this weekend.
“She always wanted to do anything that would help her be a better friend, a daughter, a girlfriend,” Breonna Taylor’s mother Tamika Palmer said in an interview with The Cut to mark her daughter’s birthday on Friday. “I was definitely in awe of her. For her to die the way she did was a smack in the face. It just feels like they took a piece of me.”
The three officers who fatally fired on Breonna Taylor in her home are on administrative duty pending an internal Louisville Metro Police Department investigation, according to Courier-Journal.
The March 13 incident is now under investigation by the FBI, but none of the officers involved have been arrested or charged.
But we’ve been learning a lot about the history of at least one of the officers, Brett Hankison. Earlier in May, it was revealed that Hankison has been accused of planting drug evidence in a lawsuit. And more recently, two women have come forward with claims that Hankison sexually assaulted them while on duty.
Both of the women shared that their interactions with Hankison began when he offered to drive them home after a night out at a bar. In a Facebook post, one of the women, Margo Borders, wrote that in April 2018, Hankison “drove me home in uniform, in his marked car, invited himself into my apartment and sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious.” Borders added, “I never reported him out of fear of retaliation. I had no proof of what happened and he had the upper hand because he was a police officer. Who do you call when the person who assaulted you is a police officer? Who were they going to believe? I knew it wouldn’t be me.”
A few days later, another woman, Emily Terry, shared a similar story in a post on Instagram. Hankison, Terry wrote, drove up next to her one night as she was walking home from a far and offered her a ride home. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow. That is so nice of him.’ And willingly got in,” she wrote. But then, she added, “He began making sexual advances towards me; rubbing my thigh, kissing my forehead, and calling me ‘baby.’” Terry ignored his advances and immediately got out of his squad car when they arrived at her apartment building. “My friend reported this the next day, and of course nothing came from it,” Terry wrote.
According to the Courier-Journal, Hankison has been investigated in the past by the Louisville Police Department’s Public Integrity Unit over allegations of sexual misconduct while in uniform.
More, from the Courier-Journal:
In a statement released by an attorney working with Breonna Taylor’s family, Borders called Hankison “a predator of the worst kind.” “He used his uniform to stalk women at local bars and sexually assault them,” Borders said in the statement. “I was one of these women. This man knew his badge would keep us quiet and that his LMPD brotherhood would protect him. After several years and several victims, it was clear he was right.”In 2015, a probation and parole officer told investigators that a parolee had informed her that Hankison told her he wanted to “date her.” In an initial interview, the parolee said he had “come onto her” and said a ticket could be taken care of if she had sex with him.
She later retracted those statements. An investigator, in recommending the case be closed, said no evidence was found and it was clear she was being “deceptive.”
In 2008, Hankison was accused of receiving oral sex in exchange for not arresting a woman with an outstanding warrant, but the woman denied it occurred.
She said she wasn’t arrested because she gave information on a drug dealer.
Borders added, “When I found out that Brett Hankison, whose face and presence in Louisville had haunted me for the last two years, was one of Breonna’s killers, I knew my time of being silenced by this man was over.”
Taylor’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Louisville Police Department in which they list more allegations of Hankison’s violent history, including “dozens of situations where he has sent citizens to the hospital for injuries from being tased, pepper sprayed and struck repeatedly in the nose and eyes.” Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, has repeatedly called for the three officers who killed her daughter to be fired. “It’s very frustrating, it’s heartbreaking,” Palmer told the Washington Post. “It’s a smack in the face, actually, to know that these officers are still being paid to do a job that they failed at.”