Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, filed a federal lawsuit against the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department and the officers involved in the deadly shooting.
The lawsuit, filed jointly by several law firms on Friday in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, accused the LMPD of violating its constitutional rights.
The lawsuit said that the LMPD’s actions in the attack violated Walker’s Fourth Amendment rights, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
“This is a very important process for claiming Kenneth Walker’s constitutional rights under the United States Constitution,” Cliff Sloan, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who represents Walker in the process, told ABC News. “We are looking to ensure that there is justice and accountability for the tragic and unjustified police attack on Kenneth Walker and for the murder of Breonna Taylor.”
The lawsuit was opened the day before the anniversary of Taylor’s death.
On March 13, 2020, undercover police officers LMPD Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, executed a preventive arrest warrant at the apartment where Taylor and Walker were living in Louisville, Kentucky. Law enforcement officers alleged that Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was dispatching drugs to the address.
The police broke down the door while the couple slept. Walker, a licensed gun holder, said he thought someone was breaking in and fired a single shot that hit Mattingly in the leg. The officers returned with a volley of bullets that hit and killed Taylor, a 26-year-old medical worker.
The complaint cites the Louisville and Jefferson County Metro government and officers Hankison, Cosgrove and Mattingly.
The complaint also accused the LMPD of “tacitly approving the excessive use of force” by failing to “properly train its officers in the use of reasonable (and not excessive) force”.
“Although Mr. Walker did not commit any crime, the police at the scene took him into custody. Defendant Hankison told Mr. Walker that he would go to jail for the rest of the [his] life, “said the complaint, obtained by ABC News.
The operation led to Walker suffering “mental distress, emotional distress, trauma, humiliation, embarrassment and damage to reputation,” the suit said. Walker is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
The LMPD told ABC News that the department does not comment on pending litigation, but the department defended the officers by saying that they knocked and announced themselves at Taylor’s door in the incident. Walker said he heard a knock on the door, but when he asked who it was, they didn’t hear the police response, according to the lawsuit.
In September, Mattingly defended his actions in an email to more than 1,000 of his colleagues, saying, “I know we did the cool, moral and ethical things that night. It is sad how good guys are demonized and criminals canonized. “
In an exclusive interview with ABC News and the Louisville Courier Journal in October, Mattingly offered empathy for Taylor’s death, saying, “It was tragic. It’s awful. “When asked what he would do differently, he said he would have broken into Taylor’s residence without giving him time to respond, claiming that the shooting would not have happened if that were the case.
Walker was charged with attempted murder of a police officer in the operation. He said he shot self-defense. The charge was dropped this week.
Last year, Walker filed a lawsuit in the state court at Jefferson Circuit Court against the city and the LMPD.
That lawsuit claimed that Walker should be exempt from criminal prosecution under Kentucky’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which “protects all Kentucky residents who seek to protect themselves or their loved ones in self-defense,” according to the lawsuit.
Taylor’s death sparked national protests condemning racism and police brutality. To date, none of the policemen involved in the operation has been charged with his death.