Kenneth Walker, who was Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, filed a federal lawsuit against the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department (LMPD) and the officers involved in executing the pre-trial arrest warrant that resulted in Taylor’s death, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated during the operation.
CNN obtained a copy of Walker’s lawsuit and reported that its lawyers claim that officers violated their Fourth Amendment rights when they executed a search and seizure warrant last March.
They also claim that the warrant itself was based on forged statements, that the operation was carried out unnecessarily at night, that the officers did not announce that they were officers and that the officers responded with excessive force.
The lawsuit also accuses the police of failing to coordinate with the Louisville Metropolitan Police SWAT team, which normally handles search and seizure warrants. He criticizes the LMPD for regularly allowing police officers to execute search warrants at night, claiming that executing nightly search warrants “predictably leads to dangerous situations in which search targets confuse the police with intruders”.
“We are seeking 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 at his home in the middle of the night,” said Professor of the Georgetown University Law Center, Cliff Sloan, one of lawyers representing Walker, told CNN in a statement.
Police executed a search warrant on March 13, 2020, in the apartment that Walker and Taylor shared while the couple slept. Walker, thinking the cops were intruders, fired a shot at the front door and hit Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly on the leg. The return of the police shooting killed Taylor.
Walker was charged with assault and attempted murder of a police officer. The charges were fired with prejudice last week, preventing him from being accused of the incident.
In September, authorities announced that none of the officers involved in the operation – Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison and Mattingly – would be charged with Taylor’s death. Hankinson was charged with three minor charges of arbitrary danger by several bullets that penetrated a wall and entered a neighboring apartment.
Great anonymous jurors later said that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) never recommended homicide charges and that the jury was never allowed to consider such charges against officers.