Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sound asleep in bed after midnight in their Kentucky home when three plainclothes cops busted into their home with a battering ram and a warrant based on lies, searching for drugs that did not exist.
Jolted awake into believing they were being robbed, Walker called 911, then shot at the intruders, striking one in the leg. The cops responded by firing more than 20 rounds into the apartment (as well as the adjoining apartment where a 5-year-old girl slept), killing Taylor, a 26-year-old nursing student who was working as an EMT at two hospitals during the coronavirus crisis.
Louisville police officers Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove and John Mattingly, the latter who was shot in the thigh, found no drugs in the March 13 raid but ended up arresting Walker and charging him with attempted murder of a police officer.
Walker, 27, a legal gun owner with no criminal history, said he had no idea they were cops and there is no evidence to suggest he did.
But there is plenty of evidence to suggest it was another botched raid by another group of corrupt cops using another rubber stamping judge to kill another innocent citizen, all under the pretense of a failed drug war that has long run its course. Not to mention another preposterous attempt by police to play the victim.
Like the botched raid in Texas last year that led to the arrest of two Houston police officers on murder charges, police lied on the search warrant when presenting it to Judge Mary Shaw, who apparently signed it without questioning it.
Also like the botched raid in Houston, one of the cops involved already had an open lawsuit against him for planting drugs and fabricating evidence but was allowed to continue participating in drug raids with no oversight. Louisville cop Brett Hankison who also has a long history of use of force complaints against him is described as a “dirty cop” in the lawsuit filed last year.
And like the botched raid in Houston, there is no evidence police even announced themselves as cops before breaking the door down despite claiming in Walker’s affidavit that “detectives knocked multiple times and announced their presence in an attempt to get occupants to answer the door.”
That’s an obvious lie considering detectives were insistent the judge sign a no-knock search warrant because as they explained in the warrant, “these drug traffickers have a history of attempting to destroy evidence, have cameras on the location that compromise detectives once an approach to the dwelling is made, and have a history of fleeing from law enforcement.”
But now they expect us to believe they stood in front of the door knocking like a trio of midnight Jehovah’s Witnesses just waiting to be invited in?
No, that is all part of the Police PR Spin Machine and if they lie about that, they will lie about anything, including the “evidence” they gathered for the search warrant.
According to WDRB:
A U.S. postal inspector in Louisville said Metro police did not use his office to verify that a drug suspect was receiving packages at Breonna Taylor’s apartment, one of the factors listed in officers’ request for a “no-knock” warrant for her home.
But Tony Gooden said a different law enforcement agency asked his office in January to investigate whether Taylor’s home was receiving any potentially suspicious mail. After looking into the request, he said, the local office concluded that it wasn’t.
“There’s no packages of interest going there,” he said in an interview after WDRB News contacted him Friday.
Gooden’s disclosure raises new questions about the Louisville police department’s justification for a warrant that allowed officers to enter the Springfield Drive apartment without knocking or identifying themselves — and why her home was even targeted.
The main target of the police drug investigation was a man named Jamarcus Glover who Breonna Taylor had dated two years earlier and had maintained a “passive friendship” with him, according to attorney’s for the victim’s family.
In fact, another group of Louisville cops had already served another search warrant at Glover’s house that night which was ten miles away. He was already in custody by the time cops arrived at Taylor’s apartment.
Police, meanwhile, have refused to release public records pertaining to the case, including the 911 call made by Walker which should be enough to clear him of the charges. And they continue to portray Walker as a menace to society when not only does he not have a criminal record, he had every right to defend himself under Kentucky’s Castle Doctrine.
Two weeks after the incident when a judge released him from jail, allowing him to remain on house arrest until his trial, police union president Ryan Nichols issued the following hyperbolic statement to the media:
Just one week ago, this man violently attacked our officers and was charged with attempted murder after shooting a sergeant! Not only is he a threat to the men and women of law enforcement, but he also poses a significant danger to the community we protect!
LMPD officers put their lives on the line everyday protecting the citizens of this community. Judge Stevens’ actions are a slap in the face to everyone wearing a badge. His actions place our community at risk of further violence!
A similar case out of Corpus Christi, Texas resulted in a jury acquitting a man who shot three cops breaking into his home in a no-knock raid because they did not identify themselves as cops.
Although police have refused to release several public records requested by the Louisville Courier-Journal, they did release an audio recording from the moments following Mattingly getting shot in the thigh with a man, presumably one of the cops, telling a dispatcher, “officer down!” and “officer shot on Springfield!” in an obvious attempt to portray themselves as the victims – much as they did after the botched raid in Houston.
Also like the case in Houston, there have been changes in policies resulting from this raid, including a requirement that cops must wear body cameras during raids as well as a requirement that cops must seek approval from the chief before obtaining a no-knock warrant but these are changes that should have been implemented years ago but there was obviously little oversight and accountability.
It took seven months for the cops in Houston to be criminally charged and it’s only been two months in this case, so if the parallelisms between the two cases continues, karma will catch up to these cops after all.
A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed against the police department by Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, which you can read here.
