I say her name and I don't like what's coming up Breaonna Taylor. Here is a reprint of what the local paper investigated and reported on. Judge for yourself. Nothing here has been changed or edited.
Editor’s note: The Courier
Journal has exhaustively covered all aspects of the fatal March 13
shooting of Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville Metro Police
Department officers. As the investigation of their conduct continues,
this story examines documents and other evidence we obtained that helps
explain why LMPD pursued the no-knock search warrant and why they were
there that night. It does not justify the shooting but provides more
insight into this highly controversial case that has captured the
nation’s interest. An earlier version of this story published
prematurely Tuesday morning before final edits were made. We apologize
for that misstep.
An internal report written by Louisville Metro Police after officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor on March 13 sheds more light on the reasons why they chose to forcibly enter her South End apartment the night she was killed.
It
provides no explanations or evidence aimed at justifying the shooting
that has sparked three months of protests in Louisville and national
outrage, with critics accusing police of breaking into the home of an
unarmed Black woman for no legitimate reason and killing her.
But
the 39-page report and corroborating evidence do show that Taylor had
more extensive ties than previously made public with an accused drug
trafficker who was at the center of a larger narcotics investigation in
Louisville. It is not known if details included in the report were
presented to the judge who signed the controversial "no-knock" warrant
for Taylor's apartment.
The
findings of the report, corroborated by jail phone recordings and other
documents obtained by The Courier Journal, detail multiple links
between Taylor and Jamarcus Glover of Louisville, a main target in a
drug probe that prompted police to request the search warrant for
Taylor’s apartment.
Plainclothes officers that night battered in her door, searching for drugs and illicit cash. None were found.
Glover
was arrested the same night as Taylor’s shooting. He was picked up at
an alleged drug house 10 miles to the north in Louisville’s West End. He
was released on bail but is now a fugitive after failing to post a new
bail set at $50,000 when he was charged again last month.
"Breonna
Taylor did not deserve to die no matter what her role in all this,”
said a Jefferson County law enforcement official who asked not to be
identified because Kentucky's attorney general is still deciding whether
the officers who shot Taylor should be prosecuted.
In an email to The Courier Journal, Sam Aguiar, an
attorney for Taylor’s estate, which filed a wrongful death suit April
27 against the city, said that “while this looks like a smear campaign, I
also appreciate the need for everything to get out to the public about
this case. Good and bad.”
He said the police
department went to "great lengths AFTER Breonna died and this case
received national scrutiny to dig up all of her past."
In a statement issued early Tuesday morning, Mayor Greg Fischer condemned the release of the report.
"Breonna
Taylor's death was a tragedy. Period. Justice, peace and healing are
what is needed for her, for her family and for our community," Fischer
said.
"It is deeply reckless for this
information, which presents only a small fraction of the entire
investigation, to be shared with the media while the criminal process
remains ongoing. It would be unjust to draw conclusions about this case
before the investigation is complete and the full truth comes out. And,
efforts to sway opinion and impact the investigation by releasing select
information are wrong and divisive, at a time when our city needs unity
more than ever before."
The Courier Journal reported May 12 that a sworn affidavit from LMPD Detective Joshua Jaynes said Glover was seen walking into Taylor's apartment one January afternoon and left with a "suspected USPS package in his right hand" then drove to a "known drug house" on Muhammad Ali Boulevard.
Jaynes
also said he verified through a U.S. postal inspector that Glover had
been receiving packages at Taylor's address, though that was later
contradicted by Postal Inspector Tony Gooden.
However,
the police report reviewed by The Courier Journal goes beyond the
information in the affidavit, detailing evidence into police
surveillance of Taylor and Glover, as well as the recorded phone
conversations from the jail involving Glover and Taylor.
The Courier Journal reviewed the report on Taylor compiled by the LMPD's new Place-Based Investigations unit, which targets violent crime at specific locations, as
part of its investigation of Glover. The Courier Journal also reviewed
transcripts of jailhouse calls Glover and other defendants made from
Metro Corrections.
The report is undated, and
an LMPD spokesperson did not respond to requests for information about
it, including whether it has been provided to the mayor, police chief or
other city or commonwealth officials.
It was written by an LMPD detective whose name was redacted from a copy of the report The Courier Journal reviewed.
The
evidence it details includes the results of a tracking device placed on
Glover’s Dodge Charger that shows it was driven to Taylor’s apartment
six times in January.
The report includes
photographs of Glover entering and exiting Taylor’s building. In
the application for the search warrant of Taylor's apartment, police
said they suspected drugs and money were being held at the residence.
Glover
made a call from jail about 12 hours after he was arrested March 13 at
2424 Elliott Ave. — the same day Taylor was shot and killed by police
executing a search warrant at her apartment signed by Jefferson Circuit
Judge Mary Shaw.
In that recorded March 13 call, Glover, 30, told a
girlfriend that Taylor was holding $8,000 for him and that she had been
“handling all my money.” No money was found at her residence during the
police search.
But the recordings and other evidence reviewed by The Courier Journal show Taylor and Glover maintained closer ties.
On
Jan. 3, for example, following Glover’s arrest on trafficking and
weapons charges, he called Taylor from the jail and asked her to contact
one of his co-defendants to get bail money.
Taylor responded that the associate was “already at the trap” — slang for a house used for drug trafficking.
Glover
told her to be on standby to pick him up if he made bail. “I'm going to
get me some rest in your bed,” he said, according to the recording.
“Love you,” he said, at the end of the call.
“Love you, too,” she replied.
In
his email to The Courier Journal, Aguiar apologized to “the public and
to Breonna’s family” for mischaracterizing the relationship, saying it
was based on an erroneous conclusion he drew without the benefit of the
jail recording.
Ryan Nichols, president of
River City FOP Lodge 614, told The Courier Journal that he wishes more
information about Taylor’s connection with Glover had been released
earlier because it would have countered erroneous rumors that police
went to the wrong address and had no reason to search Taylor’s home.
Keturah
Herron, policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of
Kentucky, blasted LMPD for creating the report, calling it a case of
victim-blaming.
"We have seen this,
historically, not just in Breonna's case, but in cases across the
nation," Herron told The Courier Journal. "They did it with Freddie
Gray. They did it with Trayvon Martin. And then just recently, they did
it with Jacob Blake (the victim of a police shooting this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin).
"What's
important here is that regardless of what Breonna was involved in from
the day that she was born until March 13, it does not give reason for
her to be murdered the way she was murdered," she said.
"For
LMPD now, or even sometimes the media … to basically try to paint the
picture that it's OK for police to use those tactics, it's absurd. It's
disrespectful. It's distasteful."
At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, interim LMPD Chief Robert Schroeder chastised the release of the internal report.
"We
want to protect the integrity of all of our investigations," Schroeder
said. "This kind of leak and this kind of reporting is simply not
helpful to the process. It seems irrelevant to the goal of getting
justice, peace and healing for our community."
The Courier Journal has corroborated that on Dec.
30, 2019, five days before her recorded jail conversation with Glover,
Taylor posted a $2,500 bond for another man charged in the same case,
34-year-old Darreal Forest.
His attorney, Casey McCall, did not immediately respond to a question about how his client knew Taylor.
Glover,
Forest and three other men were charged with trafficking and weapons
offenses after police received a tip from a confidential informant that
they were hiding drugs and firearms in abandoned homes adjacent to the
"trap house" they allegedly operated at the Elliott Avenue address.
Police seized five handguns and three rifles, according to evidence filed in the case.
The
jail recordings The Courier Journal reviewed show that on March 13,
Glover, while trying to round up cash to make bail on a new set of
trafficking charges, called a girlfriend and told her Taylor had his
money.
"She had the eight grand I gave her the other day, and she picked up another six," Glover said.
“Did she tell you where it was?” the caller asked him.
“She didn't have the chance to tell me nothing,” he replied. “She dead.”
When
the caller asked Glover why he had left the money with Taylor, he said:
“Don’t take it wrong but Bre been handling all my money. She has been
handling (expletive) for me and … it ain’t just me."
Records
previously examined by The Courier Journal show no money or drugs were
found in the search of Taylor’s apartment after her death.
And
nothing in the recordings or other evidence recently obtained by The
Courier Journal substantiates Glover’s claim that Taylor was handling
money for him.
Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, one of the three officers
who fired shots into Taylor’s apartment, later told investigators from
the Public Integrity Unit, which investigates potential crimes by
government employees, that police believed Taylor may have held drugs and money for Glover.
But
in a different recorded phone call from the jail on March 13, Demarius
Bowman, who was arrested with Glover, told his sister that another
woman, Alicia “Kesha” Jones, 24, had been given the group’s money.
“We put all the money on Kesha,” said Bowman, also 24. “We dumped everything on her.”
Jones
was holding $3,413 in cash when she was arrested earlier following the
search at suspected drug house on Elliott Avenue, according to police
records.
Jones, Glover and Bowman, along with
three other defendants — Rayshawn Lee, 33; Anthony J. Taylor II, 31; and
Adrian Walker, 28 — are charged with complicity in trafficking in a
controlled substance and running an organized crime syndicate.
They have all pleaded not guilty.
Court records show that Taylor posted bond twice
for Glover in 2017, as mentioned in the police report, though it is not
unusual for a girlfriend, spouse, friend or parent to post bond for a
loved one.
The police report says Glover called
Taylor’s phone from the jail 27 times from January 2016 to January
2020, including the Jan. 3 call in which he asked her to contact Adrian
Walker — no relation to Kenneth Walker — to round up bail money for him.
The
report also says that on Feb. 13 — a month before Taylor's death —
detectives watched through a pole camera mounted outside the Elliot
Avenue house as Taylor and Glover drove up to the house in her black
Dodge Charger.
Glover got out and went inside. He came out after a few minutes and they drove off, the report says.
Police
previously disclosed in their application to search Taylor’s apartment
that another vehicle registered to Taylor, a white 2016 Chevrolet
Impala, was seen parked in front of the Elliott Avenue house several
times.
The report says Glover called Adrian
Walker at the jail the same day Taylor was killed and said he didn’t
understand why police searched her apartment because "nothing ties me to
Bre house at all except those bonds" — an apparent reference to the
bail bonds she posted for him in 2017.
Adrian Walker responded that there were other ties, including photos they knew had been taken of her car from the police camera.
“Yeah, she was there the top of the week before I went to court,” Glover said.
He said he was upset by Taylor’s death, according to the recording.
“I’m tore,” he said. “I’m tore.
“I
keep losing those close to me,” he told Adrian Walker. “… This s---
kills my soul. I lose people that really be close to me. That hurt,
boy."
He blamed Kenneth Walker for Taylor’s death.
"At
the end of the day it was not my fault. … At the end of the day, if I
would have been at that house Bre would be alive, bruh. … I don’t shoot
at no police.”
Both former first lady Michelle Obama and Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris mentioned her when they addressed the Democratic National Convention last week.
Protesters have insisted Taylor was murdered and demanded that the officers be fired, charged and convicted.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who spoke at Tuesday's Republican National Convention, is reviewing the shooting.
Mattingly
has told investigators police knocked and announced they were officers
and that nobody responded so they used a battering ram to force open the
door.
Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker,
fired one shot from inside the apartment, saying later he thought
intruders were breaking in, and it hit Mattingly in the thigh.
Mattingly and Cosgrove returned fire first through the doorway, while Hankison fired from the outside the apartment.
Taylor died in her hallway after she was struck five times by the officers' bullets, according to her death certificate.
In
a recorded call from the jail later the same day Taylor was killed,
Walker, who was charged with the attempted murder of a police officer,
told a friend the same story he told police — that neither he nor Taylor
knew the intruders were officers.
"They was beating on the door" and Taylor "was like, who is it and they ain’t saying nothing," he said.
Charges against him have since been dismissed, subject to further investigation.
Aguiar, the Taylor family's attorney, said in his email that Breonna’s name “should not be tarnished."
“She
overcame a difficult childhood, being raised without a father in her
life and becoming the first in her immediate family to graduate high
school," he wrote.
"Breonna had no drugs or cash in her apartment at the time she was killed. Breonna was living her best life.”
