Police may have withheld bodycam footage from night of Breonna Taylor’s death

The Louisville Metro Police Department may have pushed “misinformation” and lied about the existence of body-camera footage from several officers involved in the no-knock raid that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor last year, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

The lawsuit filed against Louisville police on Wednesday by an attorney representing Ms Taylor’s family says authorities are continuing to withhold records that show whether there is additional body-camera footage that could help shed more light about the night the 26-year-old Black woman was killed. The 10-page complaint submitted to Jefferson County Circuit Court and obtained by The Washington Post challenges the accounts of Louisville police and public officials who’ve maintained that body-camera footage of the fatal shooting does not exist, because the officers did not turn on their cameras or wear them at all.

“There is a reasonable basis to believe that misinformation has been presented to the general public regarding the usage of body cameras by several members of the LMPD,” the lawsuit states.

Neither officials with the Louisville Metro Police Department nor the mayor’s office immediately responded to requests for comment Saturday.

Sam Aguiar, an attorney representing Ms Taylor’s family, told The Post that the public deserved to know whether additional footage existed for a case in which three white plainclothes officers - Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly - fired 32 shots into Ms Taylor’s apartment on 13 March 2020, as part of an investigation of a suspected drug operation allegedly linked to her ex-boyfriend. Although Mr Hankison and Mr Cosgrove were fired and Mr Mattingly retired last month, no one has been charged directly for Ms Taylor’s death - an incident that helped spark racial justice demonstrations across the United States. Mr Hankison was charged with three counts of wanton endangerment for firing bullets that penetrated an adjacent apartment, charges for which he has pleaded not guilty.

None of the officers are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Mr Aguiar, who requested in the lawsuit that a judge order the police department to release body-camera information under the state’s public records law, criticised Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat, for his administration’s handling of a case that the attorney says has been plagued by “deception, lies and coverups.”

“They’ve lied since day one and haven’t stopped,” Mr Aguiar said in a statement to The Post. “And they’re not being forthright and candid about body cameras.” He told CNN, “Breonna’s family has a right to the records.”

The lawsuit seeking body-camera footage comes months after the Justice Department announced it was opening a civil investigation of Louisville police to determine whether local authorities have engaged in systemic abuses and unlawful tactics with little accountability. The federal investigation is separate from an ongoing criminal civil rights probe into Ms Taylor’s death.

Louisville agreed to a $12 million (£8.6 million) settlement with Ms Taylor’s family last year, which was reportedly among the largest payouts for a police killing in the country’s history. As part of the settlement, the city vowed to implement a number of changes in how local officers obtain and execute search warrants. An internal investigator later found that two police officers whose shots struck and killed Ms Taylor never should have fired their weapons - a conclusion that the force’s upper brass partly rejected.

Although Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, and police have said body-camera footage of the incident does not exist, authorities did release video from officers taken at the scene after the fatal shooting.

The legal team for Ms Taylor’s family says officers involved in the no-knock raid had been issued Axon body cameras programmed to activate automatically in circumstances such as during and after the shooting. The lawsuit says that lights from police vehicles near Ms Taylor’s apartment could have triggered the department-owned body cameras to begin recording, and that “most of the vehicles” at the scene had their light bars activated.

“Simply put, it would have been difficult for most of the LMPD members with body cameras ... to not have had their Axon body cameras activated at one point or another” during the raid, the lawsuit says. “Even those who may have left cameras in vehicles or other locations should have been activated to an event mode from a buffering mode, so long as the camera was within range of Signal unit.”

The legal action came after Mr Aguiar’s request for information about footage last month went unanswered, the lawsuit says. The information requested would help figure out key details about the footage, such as the time of the recordings and identities of who accessed the footage, according to the lawsuit. That kind of information, the lawsuit says, “should assist in verifying whether Metro has been truthful to the public regarding the existence of footage.”

“The plaintiffs, and the public, have an uncompromised right to know whether undisclosed body-camera footage exists, or otherwise previously existed, from LMPD Axon Cameras which relates to the events surrounding the death of Breonna Taylor,” the complaint says.

Tamika Palmer, Ms Taylor’s mother, told ABC News that the lawsuit into potential footage is the latest avenue the family hopes will bring justice nearly 16 months after Ms Taylor’s death.

“From day one, my goal has been to learn the truth about what happened to my daughter, Breonna Taylor, and to hold those accountable for her murder responsible,” Ms Palmer said in a statement. “I, along with my family and the public, have a right to know if additional body-camera footage exists and the information sought through this open records lawsuit will give us this information.”

The Washington Post