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| Breonna Taylor (wdrb.com) |
Stories of police brutality, where thuggish cops leave citizens seriously injured, or dead, seem to pop up almost daily in recent months. Along with those, come stories of police dishonesty, where cops lie in apparent attempts to cover up misdeeds. The latest example of that comes from Louisville, KY, where the police department has been sued for allegedly lying about the existence of body-camera footage from the raid on Breonna Taylor's home, which ended in her death. From a report at wdrb.com:
An attorney for Breonna Taylor’s family has filed a lawsuit claiming Louisville Metro Police may have given the public "misinformation" about the existence of some body camera footage from the raid of Taylor's home. The lawsuit, filed against LMPD in Jefferson Circuit Court on Wednesday, claims police are also improperly withholding public records that would prove whether there are additional body camera videos from the night Taylor was shot and killed by officers.
LMPD has said there is no officer body cam footage of the early morning raid on March 13, 2020.
Officer Anthony James failed to turn on his body cam and other officers were not wearing them during the raid, police have said. Photos of former Officer Myles Cosgrove show him wearing a mounting bracket for a body camera but the camera is not attached.
Some footage from after Taylor was shot has been publicly released.
Attorney Sam Aguiar, who represented Taylor’s family in the $12 million wrongful death lawsuit paid out by the city, has previously argued that documents turned over by LMPD show there may be more body camera footage that is being withheld.
The lawsuit says that several officers involved both before and after the raid had been given body cameras.
And the department had implemented upgraded body camera equipment that automatically activates an officer’s camera — as well as all nearby body cams — when an officer’s cruiser emergency lights are turned on, according to the suit.
Is the Louisville PD trying to get away with covering up evidence?
The lawsuit says that several officers involved both before and after the raid had been given body cameras.
And the department had implemented upgraded body camera equipment that automatically activates an officer’s camera — as well as all nearby body cams — when an officer’s cruiser emergency lights are turned on, according to the suit.
The lawsuit says there were several LMPD vehicles at or near the scene while police planned the raid of Taylor’s home and then carried it out. Any of these vehicles, according to the suit, could have sent out a signal to activate nearby body cams.
For example, the suit alleges that Cosgrove’s unmarked vehicle had lights activated at various times while at the scene.
“Simply put, it would have been difficult for most of the LMPD members with body cameras and who were associated with … events at Breonna’s” home “to not have had their Axon body cameras activated at one point or another,” the suit says. (See footage at the end of this post.)
“Given that Metro was able to verify that certain LMPD members’ body cameras were specifically assigned on March 13, 2020, there is a reasonable basis to believe that misinformation has been presented to the general public regarding the usage of body cameras” by officers.
The handling, or mishandling of police records is at the heart of the Taylor lawsuit:
Police shot and killed Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room tech, during an undercover raid on her apartment on Springfield Drive as part of a series of raids elsewhere that targeted narcotics trafficking.
No drugs or money were found in her home.
The suit claims LMPD has failed to turn over an audit trail of the footage from the Axon body cameras for the night Taylor was shot and killed by police, requested under the Kentucky open records law on June 1.
That audit trail, according to the suit, would identify the time of the recordings, the user and the identity of anyone who accessed the footage.
The “audit trails should assist in verifying whether Metro has been truthful to the public regarding the existence of footage,” the suit says.
Former Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who was was shot in the leg during the raid, has claimed “under oath that he was never issued a body camera," the suit says.
But records provided to Aguiar by police show he was assigned a body camera prior to the Taylor raid, according to the suit.
The suit also claims Cosgrove and former Det. Brett Hankison, among others involved in the raid, had also been assigned body cameras.
The public, according to the lawsuit, has “an uncompromised right to know whether undisclosed body camera footage exists, or otherwise previously existed, from LMPD Axon Cameras which related to the events surrounding the death of Breonna Taylor.
The police obviously did not know who was in that residence, but they just hauled off and started shooting anyway, and an innocent young woman was killed. Totally unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteThe cops apparently were interested in the boyfriend as a suspect in drug activity, and they claim he shot at them. They seemed to think that gave them the right to fire back at will, not caring who might get in the line of fire. A classic case, in my view, of excessive force, to a sickening degree.
ReplyDeleteThese cops decided they could be judge, jury and executioner, but they executed a totally innocent person. Of all the terrible police-misconduct stories, this is one of the saddest to me. This woman was contributing a lot to society, and she's killed for no reason.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a big part of what makes is so sad . . .
ReplyDeletePolice shot and killed Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room tech, during an undercover raid on her apartment on Springfield Drive as part of a series of raids elsewhere that targeted narcotics trafficking.
No drugs or money were found in her home.
I wonder how many DUIs in this country are trumped up by cops, with false readings on equipment or bogus reports on various tests.
ReplyDeleteLegit DUIs obviously are a serious problems, but like you, I wonder how many are not legit. Any driver who gets stopped along a roadway is extremely vulnerable. The cop is in total charge, and you can wind up with anything from drugs planted in your vehicle to skewed DUI tests. Cops probably see it as a "trust me" situation. But quite a few of them have proven to be untrustworthy.
ReplyDeleteThis young woman was working as an ER technician. Think how many lives she could have h3lped save. That makes the whole story even more tragic.
ReplyDelete