Roughly one week after Louisville, Kentucky, Police Officer, Brett Hankison was indicted by a grand jury on three felony counts of wanton endangerment for his role in the death of Breonna Taylor, audio recordings from those grand jury sessions have been made public.
A Jefferson Circuit Court Judge’s decision in favor of publication is an unusual move for grand jury proceedings. Kentucky’s Republican/African-American Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, has faced scrutiny among Black Lives Matter advocates for his handling of the case.
Nonetheless, he addressed the ordered release of the audio in a statement Friday, “I’m confident that once the public listens to the recordings, they will see that our team presented a thorough case to the Jefferson County Grand Jury.”
In the recordings, at least two of the Louisville Officers who executed the no-knock search warrant on Taylor’s home stated that they both knocked and announced themselves prior to entering via force. Their statements contradict those of Taylor’s neighbors and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was inside with her during the raid.
Much of the debate around Taylor’s death revolves around officers’ response to Walker reportedly firing a “warning shot” to scare off who he says he thought to be an intruder. Police claim Sergeant John Mattingly, an attendee of the raid, was shot in the leg, thus prompting officers to return fire against Walker.
Additional video footage of police activity after the raid was recently published by Vice, and showed a tense interaction wherein an unidentified officer threatened to sic his dog on Walker for insufficiently cooperating with his arrest after Taylor was repeatedly shot.
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