‘Justice failed us.’ No Louisville officers charged with killing Breonna Taylor

A Louisville grand jury indicted only one of the three officers involved in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor Wednesday, but none of the charges were directly related to Taylor’s death.

Police investigators Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly fired their weapons during the botched operation in which police shot and killed Taylor, a Black woman.

Hankison was charged with three counts of wanton endangerment, the court announced Wednesday. No charges were filed against the other officers whose use of force was justified because Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot first, according to Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who spoke after the grand jury reported its findings.

“There is nothing I can offer today to take away the grief and heartache this family is experiencing as a result of losing a child, a niece, a sister and a friend. What I can provide today are the facts,” Cameron said.

None of the three wanton endangerment charges against Hankison were related to Taylor’s death. He was charged over bullets he shot that went into a neighboring apartment.

Hankison was booked at the Shelby County Detention Center later Wednesday but paid the $15,000 bond and was released.

Taylor’s killing has been a key issue in protests over racial inequity in America — particularly how law enforcement has treated Black Americans — and in the moments following the indictment, anger and disbelief was expressed by protesters in Louisville and Lexington as well as others on social media.

“Let’s be clear,” State Rep. Charles Booker said in a media briefing. “Justice failed us today. It failed us in the way it has been failing us for generations ... a woman, a Black woman was killed in her home by the agency paid to protect and serve her. That is wrong. There is no justifying that.”

Not long after the announcement, Lexington protest organizer Tayna Fogle indicated the charges in the case were not fair.

“They give Black and brown people more time for having crack-cocaine in your pocket, and they give them a $50,000 bond,” Fogle said. “Wanton endangerment is a lesser charge than first-degree murder, I can tell you that.”

Officer’s attorney: Kentucky justice system worked

Kent J. Wicker, an attorney for Mattingly, said in a statement Wednesday that the grand jury’s decision not to indict his client showed that “the system worked” and that the grand jury saw and respected the facts in the case.

“The death of Breonna Taylor is a tragedy,” Wicker said in the statement. “But these officers did not act in a reckless or unprofessional manner. They did their duty, performed their roles as law enforcement officers and, above all, did not break the law.”

When addressing the public after the announcement, Cameron called for calm, expressed condolences to Taylor’s family and discussed the results of his office’s investigation.

“Criminal law is not meant to respond to every sorrow and grief, and that is true here,” Cameron said. “But my heart breaks for the loss of Ms. Taylor.”

Cameron would not release the grand jury’s racial makeup and would not give a legal reason why he would not release that information. He also said he would not be releasing the full grand jury report.

The investigation conducted by Cameron’s office focused only on what happened in Taylor’s apartment on the night of the shooting, not the process of obtaining the warrant that put the officers at her door that night. A federal investigation into possible civil rights violations is ongoing, and Cameron cited that investigation as a reason his office would not yet release some details.

Hankison, Cosgrove and Mattingly went to Taylor’s apartment on the night of March 13 to execute a no-knock warrant, but Cameron said Wednesday that the officers knocked and announced themselves before breaching the door, based on the account of the officers and one civilian witness.

1 of 6 shots that hit Breonna Taylor was fatal

Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, said after the shooting that the two had been asleep when the officers first arrived and didn’t know who was at the door. Walker fired a shot when Mattingly entered, and police say that shot struck Mattingly in the leg. Police then fired, striking Taylor multiple times. She died in the hallway of her apartment a few seconds or minutes after being shot, Cameron said Wednesday.

Taylor was shot six times, but the one fatal shot was fired by Cosgrove, according to a ballistics report from the FBI. A ballistics analysis conducted by the Kentucky State Police was inconclusive. Cameron said it was unclear why the KSP ballistics report did not match the FBI’s, but that discrepancy created a “reasonable doubt” that Cosgrove fired the fatal shot.

By law, the use of force by Mattingly and Cosgrove was justified, so charges could not be filed against them, Cameron said. Ballistics evidence proved that Mattingly was injured by Walker’s shot, not by friendly fire, Cameron said.

Hankison fired 10 shots. Cameron said his office will prosecute the three counts of wanton endangerment against Hankison based on those bullets that traveled into the other apartment, endangering three people.

Taylor’s death was a tragedy, and sometimes criminal law is not adequate to respond to a tragedy, Cameron said. But all of the evidence was presented to a grand jury before it reached its decision.

“Justice is not always easy, it does not fit the mold of public opinion,” Cameron said.

Hankison was the only one of the officers fired earlier this year after the acting police chief publicly excoriated him for blindly firing the multiple shots into the apartment in violation of department rules. Before joining the LMPD, Hankison worked as an officer for the Lexington Police Department for about three years. Upon his 2002 resignation from the Lexington department, a supervisor said in a memo that he strongly recommended against ever rehiring Hankison because of his refusal to accept supervision, violations of standing orders and general poor attitude.

Protesters were already gathering in Louisville and Lexington before the announcement of the grand jury’s findings was made Wednesday afternoon. Both cities had taken steps to secure their downtown areas before the indictments were revealed, preparing for whatever reaction occurs as people process the news.

Booker, who has played a role in the protests over the past six months, said the call for justice was always deeper than just accountability for the officers involved in Taylor’s killing.

“Justice isn’t just about what happens to these officers, it never was just about what happens to these officers, it was always about the fact that we have generations of poverty and inequity all across our commonwealth.”

KY attorney general: Celebrities try to ‘tell us how to feel’

Protesters in Louisville and around the country have been calling — for months — for justice in Taylor’s case and for an end to police violence against Black people. Notable figures, officials and celebrities — from U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris to Cory Booker to Oprah Winfrey to LeBron James — have repeatedly worn, displayed or shared Taylor’s photos or memes with her name and image while urging Cameron to file charges. The #sayhername hashtag has been widely circulated.

On Wednesday, Cameron criticized celebrities and activists from out of state, saying they were trying to “tell us how to feel.”

“Let’s not give into the attempts to influence our thinking or capture our emotions,” Cameron said. “At the end of the day, it is up to us. We live here together, we work here and raise our families here together. I urge those protesting on the streets to remember this.”

Mattingly drew some criticism on Tuesday after an email he sent to other LMPD officers was reported on by Vice News correspondent Roberto Aram Ferdman. In the email, he referred to some protesters as “thugs” and told officers that “none of these ‘peaceful’ protesters are worth your career or freedom.”

On Sept. 15, the city of Louisville announced that it had agreed to pay $12 million to Taylor’s family in a civil settlement over her death. The city also promised a series of police reforms as part of the settlement.

But Taylor’s family and protesters said at the time of the settlement that for true justice to be achieved, the officers involved in the shooting needed to be criminally charged and fired. Cameron said he spoke with Taylor’s family prior to Wednesday’s announcement.

When the terms of the settlement were disclosed, an attorney for Taylor’s family, Ben Crump, called for a minimum of a second-degree manslaughter charge.

Taylor family attorney says grand jury decision outrageous

Wednesday, Crump on Twitter called the charges in the indictment, and the fact that none of them addressed Taylor’s death, outrageous and offensive.

“If Brett Hankison’s behavior was wanton endangerment to people in neighboring apartments, then it should have been wanton endangerment in Breonna Taylor’s apartment too,” Crump said on Twitter. “In fact, it should have been ruled wanton murder!”

Unresolved is the FBI investigation into Taylor’s death that is looking into possible civil rights violations.

While that investigation will involve the process by which the warrant for Taylor’s apartment was obtained, Cameron announced separately that his office will launch a task force to investigate more broadly how warrants are obtained in Kentucky.

In the weeks before Wednesday’s indictments, police documents that alleged Taylor was connected to drug crimes of her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, were obtained by media outlets. In the documents, police outlined their case for executing a no-knock warrant at Taylor’s apartment, citing jailhouse phone calls and other surveillance tying her to Glover and suspected drug activity.

Glover indicated in recorded jail calls that Taylor was holding money for him, but he said in a later call from the jail that he didn’t understand why police would search her apartment. He said the only thing tying him to her house was “bonds,” an apparent reference to prior bond payments made for him by Taylor, according to the Courier-Journal.

In an interview with the Courier-Journal, Glover said that the information police used to tie Taylor to the drug activity was misleading and incorrect.

Taylor’s family and others have maintained that none of the allegations meant she deserved to be killed by police.