THE LOUISVILLE METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT: A ROGUE, OUT-OF-CONTROL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY
The circumstances of the tragic March 13, 2020, taking pictures dying of Breonna Taylor by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Division (LMPD) signaled that the division was a rogue, out-of-control legislation enforcement company.
That evening a bunch of plainclothes officers carried out a no-knock-forced entry drug raid on Taylor’s condo. A Jefferson County Circuit Decide accredited 5 search warrants for raids at totally different places the place Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was suspected of dealing medication.
A type of places was Taylor’s condo.
No less than seven LMPD officers participated within the raid on Taylor’s condo. Three officers—Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove—participated in a shootout that ensued as soon as the officers pressured entry into Taylor’s condo.
Saying he didn’t hear any knock on the door and believing the officers have been intruders, Walker grabbed a legally owned gun and shot Mattingly within the leg. The officers returned hearth with 32 bullets—5 struck Taylor, killing her, whereas none struck Walker. Ten of these 32 bullets have been fired by Hankison outdoors Taylor’s condo as he blindly fired by a aspect window and patio door of the dwelling. A few of Hankison’s bullets entered a neighboring condo the place a pregnant girl, a person, and a toddler have been current.
Within the aftermath of Breonna Taylor’s killing, which drew nationwide and worldwide public outrage, Walker was charged with first-degree assault by the Louisville district legal professional’s workplace—a cost the DA was pressured to dismiss with prejudice 12 months later. The Metropolis of Louisville settled a wrongful dying lawsuit introduced by Taylor’s household for $12 million. The LMPD fired Hankison for blindly firing into Taylor’s condo, after which a grand jury indicted him on “wanton first-degree endangerment” expenses by endangering the lives of the three individuals within the neighboring condo.
An ensuing LMPD investigation decided that Cosgrove fired the 5 bullets that fatally struck Taylor. The LMPD fired him as a result of the 16 bullets he fired that evening violated departmental coverage.
As for Jonathan Mattingly, he retired from the LMPD 14 months after Taylor’s killing.
Six months after Taylor’s dying, a state grand jury refused to carry murder expenses towards any of the officers concerned in her dying.
In January 2021, three grand jurors filed an impeachment petition with the state legislature towards Kentucky Legal professional Common Daniel Cameron, accusing him of deceptive the general public in regards to the grand jury proceedings, saying the legal professional basic by no means offered murder expenses to the jurors.
Then in August 2022, the U.S. Justice Division (DOJ) introduced {that a} federal grand jury had indicted 4 present and former LMPD officers on varied expenses, together with civil rights offenses, illegal conspiracies, obstruction offenses, and use of extreme drive.
Brett Hankison was the one on-scene officer concerned in Taylor’s taking pictures dying that was indicted. The opposite three officers—Sgt. Kyle Meany, a former LMPD detective named Joshua Jaynes, and present LMPD Detective Kelly Goodlett—have been indicted for his or her roles in falsifying search warrant-related paperwork and offense stories in a felony effort to cowl up the main points of the Taylor taking pictures dying.
The LMPD and the Metro Metropolis Authorities of Louisville (Metro) acquired their most devastating blow when the U.S. Justice Division, on March 8, 2023, launched the findings of its post-Breonna Taylor taking pictures investigation.
That investigation discovered that each LMPD and Metro have interaction “in a sample or follow of conduct that deprives individuals of their rights below the Structure and federal legislation.”
A abstract of these findings contains:
- LMPD makes use of extreme drive, together with unjustified neck restraints and unreasonable use of police canine and tasers.
- LMPD conducts searches primarily based on invalid warrants.
- LMPD unlawfully executes search warrants with out knocking and saying.
- LMPD unlawfully stops, searches, detains and arrests individuals throughout avenue encounters, together with site visitors and pedestrian stops.
- LMPD violates the rights of individuals engaged in protected speech vital of police.
- Louisville Metro and LMPD discriminate towards individuals with behavioral and psychological well being disabilities when responding to them in disaster.
The DOJ discovered that these unconstitutional and illegal actions by LMPD and Metro have been happening for years on the expense of public security. The DOJ introduced that the Louisville police division would function below a consent decree below the supervision of an unbiased monitor overseeing division reforms.
It’s unclear what number of harmless Louisville residents have been killed, significantly injured, or wrongfully convicted by the felony conduct of those two governmental entities—to not point out felony defendants being bodily abused and railroaded into jail by manufactured or the suppression of mitigating proof.
The DOJ stated its findings have been primarily based on “Louisville Metro’s and LMPD’s personal information, many 1000’s of paperwork, and 1000’s of hours of body-worn digicam footage. Importantly, our findings are additionally primarily based on conversations with lots of of LMPD officers, Louisville Metro staff, and group members.”
The DOJ discovered {that a} “lack of management” allowed these illegal actions to happen, and even when occasional options have been put forth by LMPD and Metro to rein in these actions, neither entity had the ethical management to implement them.
Put merely, the great cops have been afraid of the unhealthy cops—which is strictly the dynamic that turns good cops into unhealthy criminals, together with the federal government officers who defend these legislation enforcement criminals.
The DOJ report issued 36 suggestions and remedial measures to the LMPD and Metro about how you can deal with and determine the basis causes of the constitutional and statutory violations outlined in its report.
Whether or not Metro has the ethical management and the LMPD has the moral willingness to implement some, most, or all the DOC suggestions and remedial measures stays to be seen.
The DOJ has put these two governmental entities on discover that it’s going to indict those that proceed down the felony paths exhibited within the tragic Breonna Taylor killing.
However some cities and police departments are so corrupt that felony exercise and routine constitutional violations symbolize their legislation enforcement mannequin. Take New Orleans, for instance.
In 2011, a DOJ investigation discovered, simply because it did with the LMPD, that the New Orleans Police Division (NOPD) had engaged in a sample of illegal makes use of of extreme drive, executing unlawful search warrants, and pursuing discriminatory policing practices.
That exact DOJ investigation ended with the NOPD being positioned below a federal “consent decree”—a judicial monitoring program.
What was the results of that monitoring?
In a March 7, 2023 article for The Attraction, Meg O’Connor answered that query with the next report:
“Between 2014 and 2020, a grievance of sexual misconduct, intimate accomplice violence, or harassment was made towards New Orleans law enforcement officials about each ten days, in accordance with a report printed late final yr by the Umbrella Coalition, a coalition of native and nationwide nonprofit and civil rights organizations. In accordance with the report, practically 190 New Orleans law enforcement officials had complaints of this nature filed towards them with the division’s public integrity unit. However, in that point, the division sustained solely 3 p.c of complaints involving sexual or intimate accomplice violence, in accordance with a spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Division.
“The Umbrella Coalition discovered that, amongst different claims, officers have been accused of watching pornography at work, sexually assaulting arrestees, stalking former companions, sexually harassing a restaurant server whereas consuming alcohol on obligation, posting revenge porn of a lady, threatening a former accomplice with a gun, sexually harassing fellow staff, beating a toddler, punching a lady within the jaw, and quite a few different allegations of home battery and rape, together with one incident wherein an officer allegedly sexually assaulted somebody whereas one other officer watched. The division presently employs about 950 officers, however that quantity fluctuated through the years the Umbrella Coalition studied, and no less than 500 officers who labored for NOPD throughout these years have since resigned.”
The criminality was, and stays, so ingrained within the NOPD that the DOJ needed to carry federal felony expenses in September 2022 towards a former NOPD officer named Ricky Vicknair for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old rape sufferer in 2020.
After pleading responsible in October 2022, anticipating a sentence within the vary of 84 months, U.S. District Court docket Decide Lance Africk, on March 8, 2023, knowledgeable Vicknair and authorities prosecutors that he believed the sentence advice was too lenient. He delayed sentencing till March 14, 2023, when he was sentenced to 14 years in federal jail.
The residents of Louisville will now have to attend to see if Metro and the LMPD will comply with the lead of the Metropolis of New Orleans and the NOPD, each of which put public security in danger every day.
