Breonna Taylor Case: New Bodycam Footage Shows Officers Involved In Shooting Breaking Protocols
Breonna Taylor’s shooting death at the hands of police in March has caused widespread outrage in the general populace at how police handled the situation. After hours of footage from police officer body cams have recently been reviewed by VICE News, doubt has been casted on the integrity of the investigation — the same one that led to none of the police officers involved getting charged with her death.
VICE News reports that the received footage — that constitutes recordings from 45 different body cameras — is a part of an inveistage file that was compiled by the Louisville Metro Police Department's Public Integrity Unit that was shared with the attorney general’s office in Kentucky. And the depicted footage allegedly showcases officers breaking multiple department policies, which also corroborated some of the testimony of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker.
In the footage, allegedly, none of the seven officers that were at Taylor’s residence were separated and paired with an escort after this incident which is a violation of the LMPD’s policy which states that officers, involved in critical incidents, have to be paired with an escort offer at the scene.
Detectives Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison, Mike Campbell, and Lieutenant Shawn Hoover, are all still depicted on scene, walking freely with their guns out. Sgt. Jon Mattingly, who pulled the trigger, was shot in the leg and taken to the University of Louisville hospital.
Hankison, who was fired by the department in June, is shown on camera walking into Taylor's apartment which, at that time, was an active scene. He asked SWAT officers on scene if they had located a long gun and whether the casings found on the ground were “theirs.” Hankison, alone, fired 10 shots that night, according to the department.
Cosgrove, who fired 16 rounds, is also depicted in the footage carrying a rifle immediately after the shooting incident, with no one separating him from the responding officers. Campbell didn’t discharge a weapon but was there for the raid and lingered on scene afterwards. In the footage, he reveals that he helped interview neighbors.
Their behavior was questioned by investigators who believed that the involved officers’ actions violated department protocols. And not only did it do that, it also corroborated some of Walker’s story to police — mainly the fact that he claimed that police said that they would set a dog on him.
In the body-cam footage, an officer can be heard screaming at Walker while he’s already complying with their commands. “Walk straight back or I will send this dog on you!” the officer yells. When Walker yells back asking what he did, Hankison can be heard saying “You’re going to prison, that’s what’s going on. For the rest of your fucking life.”
In spite of so much overwhelming evidence of wrong doing, none of the officers involved in Taylor’s shooting were charged for her murder. Instead, a grand jury charged only Hankison with three counts of wanton endangerment.
"The police and law were not made to protect us Black and brown women,” said Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, in a statement. “I knew Daniel Cameron would never do his job. The system as a whole has failed Breonna."
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