Police release details of Breonna Taylor investigation
Oct 7, 2020, 4:34 PM | Updated: Dec 30, 2022, 11:22 am
FILE - In this Sept. 25, 2020, file photo, Black Lives Matter protesters march in Louisville. Hours of material in the grand jury proceedings for Taylor’s fatal shooting by police have been made public on Friday, Oct. 2. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
(AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Police files released Wednesday show contacts between Breonna Taylor and a man she dated previously who was suspected of drug dealing — a relationship that led narcotics investigators to her home in March and resulted in her death in a burst of police gunfire.
But it’s unclear from the files when those contacts ended. In a recorded jailhouse conversation on the day of Taylor’s death, ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover said he and Taylor had not “been around each other” in more than two months.
Other evidence suggests Taylor and Glover were together in the same vehicle in February, the files indicated.
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Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville emergency medical tech studying to become a nurse, was shot multiple times March 13 after being roused from sleep by police at her door. The warrant was approved as part of a narcotics investigation in which Glover was a suspect, and no drugs were found at her home.
The case has fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism. When police came through the door using a battering ram, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired once.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said it was important to release the police investigation files as quickly as possible, after making “necessary redactions.” Much of the information in the files was included in records from the grand jury proceedings released last week, he said.
“I urge all to be sensitive that these files contain information and images that are traumatic and painful,” Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said in a release.
The files include investigative letters, interview transcripts, officers’ body camera videos, audio and video files of interviews, crime scene unit reports and search warrants.
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Some items were redacted, blurred or withheld for privacy or legal reasons. Photos and videos of Taylor were “blurred out of respect,” police said. Audio of personal conversations that officers had while their body cameras were activated were redacted. Those conversations “had nothing to do with the scene or case,” police said.
Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville home by police who were executing a narcotics warrant. Details of the chaos and confusion during the raid that resulted in the 26-year-old Black woman’s death were revealed in 15 hours of audio recordings released Friday. They contained testimony and recorded interviews presented last month to the Kentucky grand jury that decided not to charge any Louisville police officers for killing Taylor.
Taylor’s name came up in the drug case at least in part because she had posted bail a few times from 2017 to January 2020 for Glover and another defendant, Darreal Forest, in amounts that went as high as $5,000, according to police files released Wednesday.
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Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
