Dylan Lovan, The Associated Press Posted Thursday, August 4, 2022 12:30 PM EDT Last Updated Thursday, August 4, 2022 4:40 PM EDT
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – The federal government filed civil rights charges Thursday against four Louisville police officers in the drug bust that killed Breonna Taylor, a black woman whose fatal shooting helped fuel the racial justice protests that shook the country. in 2020.
The charges are another effort to hold law enforcement accountable for the killing of the 26-year-old medical worker after one of the officers was acquitted of state charges earlier this year.
“Breonna Taylor should be alive today,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in announcing the charges, which include unlawful conspiracy, use of force and obstruction of justice.
The charges named former officers Joshua Jaynes and Brett Hankison, along with current officers Kelly Goodlett and Sgt. Kyle Meany. Most of the charges stem from the botched drug warrant used to search Taylor’s home.
Hankison was the only officer charged Thursday who was at the scene that night. Louisville police said they were looking to fire Goodlett and Meany.
Taylor was shot to death by officers who kicked down his door while executing a search warrant. Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot that hit one of the officers as he walked in the door, and they returned fire, hitting Taylor several times.
Local activists and members of Taylor’s family celebrated the charges and thanked federal officials. Supporters gathered in a downtown park and chanted, “Say her name, Breonna Taylor!”
“This is a day when black women saw equal justice in America,” said family attorney Benjamin Crump.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said she has waited nearly 2 1/2 years for police to be held accountable.
“It’s late today, but it still hurts,” she said. “You all (are) learning today that we’re not crazy.”
The Justice Department is also conducting a non-criminal investigation of the Louisville Police Department, announced last year, looking into whether the department has a pattern of using excessive force and conducting unreasonable searches and seizures.
In the 2020 protests, Taylor’s name was often called out along with George Floyd, who was killed less than three months after Taylor by a Minneapolis police officer in a videotaped encounter that shocked the nation.
Protesters who took to the streets for months in Louisville were particularly critical of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who only brought the unjust endangerment charges against Hankison for consideration by a grand jury in 2020. Grand jurors they later filed to complain that Cameron’s office had moved them away from charges for the other officers involved in the raid.
“Thank God that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron did not have the final say in justice for Breonna Taylor,” Crump said Thursday. “We’ve always said this was a conspiracy to cover up Breonna Taylor’s death. Today the Justice Department filed the charging documents to prove we weren’t crazy.”
Cameron, a Republican running for governor next year, said in announcing the indictment against Hankison in September 2020 that he would leave “issues related to possible civil rights violations” to federal officials to investigate. Cameron had not responded to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
Garland said officers who were at Taylor’s home shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020, “were not involved in the writing of the warrant and were unaware of the false and misleading statements.”
Hankison was charged with two counts of deprivation of rights alleging he used excessive force when he backed out of Taylor’s door, turned a corner and fired 10 shots into the side of her two-bedroom apartment. Bullets flew into a neighbor’s apartment, nearly hitting a man.
He was acquitted by a jury of the state charges earlier this year in Louisville.
A separate prosecution said Jaynes and Meany knew the warrant used to search Taylor’s home had information that was “false, misleading and out of date”. Both are charged with conspiracy and deprivation of rights.
Meany led a police unit that focused on aggressive drug investigations. Police served five warrants simultaneously on the night of Taylor’s raid, four of them in a concentrated area of suspected drug activity, and the fifth at Taylor’s apartment nearly 10 miles (16 kilometers) away.
The warrant for Taylor’s home alleged that she was receiving packages for an alleged drug dealer who was an ex-boyfriend. The warrant, signed by Jaynes and approved by Meany, said Jaynes had confirmed with the postal service that packages for the ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, were going to Taylor’s apartment. Investigators later learned that Jaynes had not confirmed this with the postal inspector.
Jaynes was fired in January 2021 for violating department standards in preparing to execute a search warrant and for being “false” in Taylor’s order.
Jaynes and Goodlett allegedly conspired to falsify an investigative document written after Taylor’s death, Garland said. Federal investigators also allege that Meany, who testified at Hankison’s trial, lied to the FBI during its investigation.
Federal officials filed a separate charge against Goodlett, alleging that he conspired with Jaynes to falsify Taylor’s warrant affidavit.
Garland alleged that Jaynes and Goodlett met in a garage in May 2020 “where they agreed to tell investigators a false story.”
Former Louisville Police Sgt. John Mattingly, who took a shot at Taylor’s door, retired last year. Another officer, Myles Cosgrove, who investigators said fired the shot that killed Taylor, was fired from the department in January 2021. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenny Walker, who was at her apartment that night and fired in Mattingly, was initially charged with attempt. killing a police officer, but that charge was dropped after Walker told investigators he thought an intruder was breaking into the apartment.
The Taylor case also prompted a review of the city’s “no-touch” warrant policy. Officers at Taylor’s gate said they called and announced they were police even though the warrant did not require it. These types of warrants, used in drug investigations to try to prevent the destruction of evidence, were later banned in the city of Louisville.