“A shock to the conscience . . .”
Three Louisville narcotics officers go on the raid they will never forget.
by Mauve Maude
October 27, 2020
The evening Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker went on their last date, the narcotics team from the Louisville Metro Police Department were busy planning a series of midnight raids. They had been investigating one Jamarcus Glover for months, as they suspected he was supplying a local drug house with crack cocaine. That night, they planned to move in on him.
And after midnight, on the morning of March 13, they did just that, when a team located and arrested him.
Brett Hankison, a 44-year-old narcotics detective, worked that night. He had been a police officer for twenty years, a seventeen-year veteran of the LMPD. His team of seven plainclothes officers were sent to the apartment of Breonna Taylor, on Springfield Drive.
Her residence was what the agency considered to be a “soft target”. It wasn’t Jamarcus Glover’s residence, or a drug house, and they didn’t expect to find Mr. Glover there. In fact, it was around that time Mr. Glover was being apprehended in another raid across town. Breonna Taylor was an ex-girlfriend of Glover, and their suspect had apparently been using her address on Springfield Drive to receive mail. A couple months earlier, he’d been observed walking into her apartment empty-handed and coming out with a package, then proceeding directly to another house they were watching. He had also been known to use a vehicle registered to Breonna in multiple visits to drug houses in the area.
Her residence was what the agency considered to be a “soft target”.
The team had been issued a warrant for a “no-knock” search, as had all the teams, meaning they could enter the residence by force as they deemed necessary. But considering Breonna Taylor was not a volatile target, police commanders had decided not to execute the search of her residence in that way. The team was briefed prior to the operation and instructed to announce their presence.
Sergeant Jon Mattingly, 47, was also a twenty-year LMPD veteran, and a Louisville native. Having taken part in some prior operations of the investigation, he had volunteered to assist the team after working his regular shift. He was the man tasked with knocking on Breonna Taylor’s door, and as they assumed Breonna would be alone, he intended to give her ample time, as instructed, to most likely wake up and get to the door. This became a decision Sgt. Mattingly would regret.
On arrival, the officers observed only one light in Breonna’s windows, the flickering of a television in the bedroom farthest from the door. As the team approached her door, a neighbor upstairs emerged from his apartment and verbally confronted them, telling them to leave Breonna alone. Det. Hankison, who Sgt. Mattingly described as “worked up”, engaged, raising his gun and arguing with the neighbor, ordering him to go inside. Sgt. Mattingly told Det. Hankison to relax and focus. Then he pounded on the door and waited for a response. After several knocks got no response, he then announced that they were the police with a search warrant.
Another officer thought he heard movement inside, thinking someone was going to answer the door. But after repeated announcements, no one came. So the lieutenant on the scene gave the order to use the battering ram and bust in the door.
“I see blinding, vivid, white light, and I see blackness at the same time. This dark, dark deep black and these vivid white flashes. At the same time, I’m seeing these flashes, I know that Jon Mattingly is at my feet.”
Detective Myles Cosgrove
Detective Myles Cosgrove, a 42-year-old former Marine, was waiting to enter the apartment right behind Sgt. Mattingly. After another officer rammed in the door, they entered Breonna’s apartment. Directly in front of him in the dark, Det. Cosgrove witnessed a muzzle flash and saw Sgt. Mattingly go down, and immediately, the officers returned fire. Sgt. Mattingly, who was shot in the leg, managed to fire six shots from the floor before he was able to take cover, with a severed femoral artery. Det. Cosgrove unloaded, firing sixteen shots into the dark. It would later be determined he was the one who fired the fatal shot.
Det. Hankison, stationed outside, fired another ten shots through Breonna’s patio door and window at where he thought the shooter would be, judging from the flashes he was observing in the doorway. The shots rang out for less than half a minute.
Sgt. Mattingly was helped out of the apartment and taken to an ambulance. He was then rushed to the hospital for surgery, and didn’t learn until the next day that Breonna Taylor was dead and had not been the shooter.
Kenneth Walker, who nobody had known was even in the apartment, much less armed, emerged, and was taken directly into custody, to be charged with attempted murder of a police officer.
Breonna Taylor, an ER tech and aspiring nurse, shot five times, received no medical assistance and died on the floor in her home. No drugs were found in her apartment.
. . . listed Breonna Taylor’s injuries as “none”, it stated that the officers hadn’t used forced entry, and the only note in the section designated for a narrative of the incident just said “PIU investigation”.
LMPD’s Public Integrity Unit, the office in charge of possible criminal cases against city employees, took over the investigation that night. It would be more than six months before the results of their investigation were made known to the public. In June, nearly three months after Breonna Taylor’s death, they released their report to the department. As the local police union agreement stipulated, officers could not be terminated over an incident until an internal investigation was completed. Det. Hankison, who also had previous issues with his employers, wasn’t relieved of his position until then. Described by the LMPD interim Chief Robert Schroeder as “a shock to the conscience”, it was determined Hankison had violated department policy by firing “blindly” into the scene, lodging some bullets into neighboring apartments and putting other civilian lives at risk. Sgt. Mattingly and Det. Cosgrove were put on administrative reassignment with pay, pending the results of the criminal investigation, which had already been handed over to the state prosecutor. A civil lawsuit against the city and the officers was also pending.
Jefferson County Commonwealth Attorney, Tom Wine, had recused his office of the LMPD investigation due to a conflict of interest, while they sought to prosecute Kenneth Walker for the attempted murder of Sgt. Mattingly. However, by the conclusion of the PIU investigation, Walker’s charges had been dropped. The day after the PIU report was released, the Louisville Metro Council passed “Breonna’s Law”, thereby banning the use of no-knock warrants in Louisville.
By then, the FBI had joined the criminal investigation as well. Also by then, furious citizens across the country were protesting the murder of George Floyd, and as national media had recently gotten wind of Breonna’s story, protesters were also calling for Brett Hankison, Jon Mattingly, and Myles Cosgrove to be charged with murder.
Though the full investigation results weren’t made public at that time, the LMPD incident report on the March 13 raid was, and readers, including Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, were shocked to find it mostly blank and otherwise incorrect, leading to suspicion of the department. For example, it listed Breonna Taylor’s injuries as “none”, it stated that the officers hadn’t used forced entry, and the only note in the section designated for a narrative of the incident just said “PIU investigation”. It did, however, release the names of the officers involved in the shooting.
It was then, three months after the shooting, amidst the rising pandemic and nationwide police protests, that the officers and their families became subject to full-scale doxing, death threats, and harassment. A recovering Sgt. Mattingly, his wife, and their child were told to leave their home for their own safety, and even their adult children and parents felt the need to leave theirs. All three officers needed ’round-the-clock protection, and other LMPD officers uninvolved with the incident faced hostility from the community as well.
So as the summer of 2020 marched on, all eyes–the eyes of Kenneth Walker and Breonna Taylor’s family, the families of Hankison, Mattingly, and Cosgrove, the LMPD, the people of Louisville, the country, Presidential candidates, and the world–turned to Daniel Cameron, the Attorney General of Kentucky.
Part Three of this story covers the decision of the Kentucky Attorney General in the case of Breonna Taylor.