City of Louisville reaches settlement with Breonna Taylor’s family
[NBC NEWS]
None of the officers involved in the case have been charged. Detective Brett Hankison, who shot 10 rounds blindly into the apartment, was fired in June.
The city of Louisville, Kentucky, has reached a settlement with Breonna Taylor’s family six months after she was killed in her home during a police drug raid.
A source familiar with the details of the settlement told NBC News the agreement is in the millions of dollars and will include a list of police reforms that will address officer accountability and the execution of search warrants.
The settlement was first reported by The Louisville Courier-Journal. Attorneys Benjamin Crump, Sam Aguiar and Lonita Baker, who are representing Taylor’s family, will discuss the settlement at a 2 p.m. ET news conference with Mayor Greg Fischer. The mayor’s spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday morning.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, filed a lawsuit in late April against three Louisville Metro Police Department officers, accusing them of wrongfully causing her daughter’s death. The lawsuit alleged police used excessive force and the search was grossly negligent. In an amended complaint filed in July, Taylor’s family claimed that the raid was connected to a gentrification project.
Officer Brett Hankison, who shot 10 rounds blindly into the apartment, where no drugs or money were found, was fired in June.
Officer Myles Cosgrove and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly have been placed on administrative leave, along with the detective who requested the warrant.
None of the officers involved in the case have been charged.
The investigation is being led by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. The shooting is also being investigated by the FBI.
Officers killed Taylor, 26, an emergency medical technician, just after midnight March 13 while serving a no-knock warrant. Mattingly was shot in the thigh by Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who said he thought an intruder was breaking into the home.
Taylor had no criminal record and was never the target of an inquiry.
Police were executing the no-knock search warrant in a drug investigation involving Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, a convicted drug dealer. He had listed her apartment as his address and used it to receive packages, authorities said.
Taylor’s case gained national attention after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes in May. Their deaths sparked global protests and calls for a national reckoning over racism and police brutality.
Many celebrities, including NBA star LeBron James and media mogul Oprah Winfrey have called for the officers involved in the case to be charged. Winfrey ceded the September cover of O: The Oprah Magazine to Taylor. Winfrey also had 26 billboards put up around Taylor’s hometown of Louisville. Each billboard — one for each year of Taylor’s life — demands justice and displays a quote from Winfrey: “If you turn a blind eye to racism, you become an accomplice to it.”
In June, Louisville officials passed Breonna’s Law. The measure banned the use of no-knock warrants, which allow the police to forcibly enter people’s homes without warning.
By Janelle Griffith and Laura Strickler