One of the cops involved in Breonna Taylor's death was photographed wearing a body cam
New crime scene photographs obtained by Vice News this week cast doubt on one of the major features of the Louisville Metro Police Department's narrative surrounding the botched no-knock raid that left 26-year-old Breonna Taylor dead in her home this past March.
In the wake of Taylor's killing by police, former LMPD Chief Steve Conrad had publicly claimed that "this incident was related to the execution of a search warrant by members of our Criminal Interdiction Division, and some of the officers assigned to this division do not wear body-worn video systems" — a seeming rejection of the growing call for documentation of the circumstances surrounding Taylor's killing. And in an interview with Vice News this past July, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) stressed that "not to my knowledge" was there any footage of the raid.
However, according to photographs taken in the immediate aftermath of the police killing, and obtained by Vice News, at least one of the officers involved in executing the no-knock warrant that led to Taylor's death is seen wearing a body camera. Another officer appears to wearing an empty body camera holder, as well.
It remains unclear whether the camera seen in the crime scene photographs was in fact turned on during the botched raid. Attorneys for Taylor's family have long sought any and all footage taken that night — both from officers involved in mistakenly serving the warrant to Taylor's home, as well as from the more than 120 officers eventually dispatched to the scene.
In a court filing, attorneys representing Taylor's family even allege that "following the shooting, LMPD officer Kelly Hanna Goodlett advised those present [serving a different warrant as part of the same drug operation] to turn off their body cameras."
"It seems awfully coincidental that the location where there was a fatal police shooting didn’t have body cams," attorney Sam Aguiar told WDRB this past June.
The lack of any charges against the officers responsible for Taylor's death has remained a significant political issue in the months since she was killed. Earlier this week, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden publicly insisted that the police who killed Taylor "need to be charged."
