Breonna Taylor's mother slams Kentucky attorney general, says she never had faith in him 'to do the right thing'
Breonna Taylor’s mother, too emotional to speak at a Friday news conference, said in a statement read by a family member that she never had faith that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron would seek justice for her daughter.
“I knew he was too inexperienced to do a job of this caliber. I knew he had already chosen to be on the wrong side of the law,” Tamika Palmer wrote in a statement read out loud by Taylor’s aunt, Bianca Austin, in front of a crowd of riled up supporters at Louisville’s Jefferson Square Park.
“What I had hoped is that he knew he had the power to do the right thing, that he had the power to start the healing of this city, that he had the power to help mend over 400 years of oppression,” she said. “What he helped me realize is that it will always be us against them, that we are not safe when it comes to them.”
The two women appeared before supporters Friday along with several attorneys representing the family. One of them, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, fumed over Wednesday’s decision not to charge any officers with killing the unarmed Black woman and demanded Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron release the grand jury transcript in the case.
“What kind of sham grand jury proceeding was this?” he said, referring to Cameron’s decision to pursue a wanton endangerment charge for only one of the three cops who fired their weapons during the botched March 13 raid.
“Did he present any evidence on Breonna Taylor’s behalf?” Crump said. “Or did he make a unilateral decision to put his thumb on the scale of justice to try to exonerate and justify the killing of Breonna Taylor by these police officers, and doing so, making sure that Breonna Taylor’s family never got their day in court?”
A Jefferson County grand jury this week indicted former Detective Brett Hankison — not for shooting Taylor, which Cameron said he didn’t do, but for blindly firing his weapon into her apartment building and putting the lives of her three white neighbors in jeopardy.
“Breonna Taylor’s entire family is heartbroken, devastated, outraged and confused and bewildered, as are all of us, as to what Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron presented to the grand jury,” Crump said before a chorus of protesters chanting, “Release the transcript.”
Cameron detailed his team’s findings in a news conference this week, but he has not released the paperwork or the report his office provided to the jury.
Wednesday’s highly anticipated announcement in a case that has drawn nationwide attention was met with widespread outrage as activists, politicians and celebrities had for months been calling for charges against the officers. It also triggered a fresh wave of protests in Louisville and across the country in the past two days.
The two cops who did shoot Taylor, Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were not charged at all. Cameron said the pair was “justified” in their use of deadly force because her boyfriend, licensed gun owner Kenneth Walker, fired the first shot and struck Mattingly in the thigh.
Taylor, an EMT and aspiring nurse, was home with Walker when the officers used a battering ram to break through the couple’s door shortly after midnight to serve a search warrant connected to a narcotics investigation. Multiple witnesses and Walker said the plainclothes officers never knocked or announced their presence, which Cameron disputed this week.
Walker has said he thought he and Taylor were the victims of a home invasion and decided to fire a warning shot with his 9-mm. firearm.
“Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend,” Walker said in a 911 call following the shooting.
Mattingly, “the first and only officer to enter the residence,” allegedly saw the couple standing at the end of the hall, with Walker “holding a gun, arms extended in a shooting stance,” Cameron told reporters. Mattingly fired six shots while Cosgrove fired 16 times, including the fatal shot, the attorney general said.
The pair has been on administrative reassignment since the investigation began.
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