Four current and former Louisville police officers involved in the botched deadly raid on Breonna Taylor’s home were arrested and charged with civil rights violations and other counts on Thursday.
During the press conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland said “Breonna Taylor should be alive today. The Justice Department is committed to defending and protecting the civil rights of every person in this country. That was this department’s founding purpose, and it remains our urgent mission.”
According to Courier Journal, former Louisville Metro Police detective Joshua Jaynes, 40, and current Sergeant Kyle Meany, 35 were charged with civil rights violations and obstruction of justice for using false information to obtain the search warrant that authorized the botched March 13, 2020 that led to the 26-year-old’s untimely death.
Current Detective Kelly Goodlett was charged with conspiring with Jaynes to falsify the warrant and then cover up the falsification.
The affidavit falsely claimed officers had verified that the target of their drug trafficking investigation had received packages at Taylor’s address. However, Jaynes and Goodlett knew that was not true, Garland said.
Jaynes and Goodlett are accused of misleading investigators probing the deadly shooting. Meany allegedly lied to the FBI, Garland said.
In a separate indictment, Brett Hankison was charged with using excessive force while executing the search warrant.
Taylor, 26, was an emergency medical technician, and, like the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, fueled the 2020 racial uprising at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taylor was the second high-profile death followed by a botched raid from a no-knock warrant. Amir Locke was shot and killed earlier this year in Minnesota from a police SWAT team officer who was searching for a suspect in a local murder. Locke was killed as he was startled out of his sleep reaching for his firearm. He grabbed the barrel of his gun. Locke was not listed as a person of interest in the warrant. Before Taylor and Locke, in 2010, seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones of Detroit, was killed while she was sleeping in her own living room. The officers responsible for Stanley-Jones’ death are free from a mistrial ruling.