#Roommates, as the country continues to accept the devastating outcome of the Breonna Taylor investigation—new bodycam footage of the night in question has been released and sadly it raises even more questions. In the footage, it appears that multiple police officers broke several department policies following the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, as well as reportedly compromising the crime scene.
@Vice exclusively reports, hours of newly obtained body cam footage from both members of the Louisville Metro Police Department and the local SWAT team, show the immediate aftermath of the police raid that tragically left Breonna Taylor dead inside her home. The footage, shows officers appearing to break multiple department policies, while corroborating parts of Kenneth Walker’s testimony, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend. The footage was captured by 45 different body cameras and included as part of the investigative file compiled by the LMPD’s Public Integrity Unit and shared with Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. In the highly questionable footage, it shows that none of the seven officers who were present during the raid were immediately separated and paired with an escort, which is what is supposed to happen—and not doing so is a violation of LMPD’s own policy.
According to interviews they gave to LMPD investigators, two of the involved officers—Detectives Mike Nobles and Tony James—left the scene and went to the University of Louisville hospital, where Sgt. Jon Mattingly, who was shot in the leg, was taken. Bodycam footage shows the four other officers involved—Detectives Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove, and Mike Campbell, and Lieutenant Shawn Hoover—still on scene, roaming around freely with their guns drawn. After SWAT team members clear the apartment and pronounce Breonna Taylor dead on scene, Hankison, who fired 10 shots that night according to the department, approaches the front door to ask if someone is dead inside. Minutes later, Hankison returns and even steps inside the apartment, an active crime scene. He asks SWAT officers if they found a long gun, and whether the casings on the ground are “theirs.” Multiple SWAT team members on the bodycam footage seem to be made visibly uncomfortable by Hankison’s presence, as one of them tells other officers sternly to clear him out.
In his investigative report, Sgt. Jason Vance wrote, “Investigators observed Detective Hankison walking in and out of the primary scene. At 0200 hours Sergeant Wilder and I verbally requested Hankison to remove himself from the primary scene and make contact with members of LMPD Peer Support.” His report also states that Hankison’s behavior violated policy. “It should be noted investigators later learned Detective Hankison deviated from standard LMPD practices for an officer involved in a critical incident and left the scene location without his assigned LMPD Peer Support escort,” it reads. “Hankison deviated from the standard protocol when he traveled unattended to University of Louisville Hospital having contact with CID command and Police Chief Steve Conrad.”
As we previously reported, the LMPD has insisted repeatedly that no bodycam footage of the Breonna Taylor shooting exists, with the department saying that officers in this unit often operate in plainclothes and were not required to wear bodycams. However, photos from the crime scene contradict initial statements by the LMPD claiming that the officers involved, who work narcotics, do not wear bodycams. Photographs of officers taken from that night clearly show Tony James, one of the at least seven officers present for the raid, wearing a body camera over his right shoulder.
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