Breonna Taylor’s family attorneys are suing Louisville Police, claiming they may have withheld body camera footage

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The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Jefferson County, claims officers involved in the raid were given body cameras programmed to activate automatically under circumstances such as those at play during and after the raid.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said the murder of Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT and aspiring nurse, was not filmed because officers at the scene did not turn on their body cameras or not wearing them at all. , CNN reported.

But signals from police vehicles near the scene may have triggered cameras used by the department to start recording automatically, according to the lawsuit, meaning more footage may exist.

Officers received Axon Flex 2 cameras designed to signal nearby cameras to record when a police vehicle’s light bar activates, the suit says. At least one officer who was part of the raid and “dozens of other LMPD members” who responded to it in police vehicles had “light bars that were activated at one point or another,” it adds. -he.
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“Put simply, it would have been difficult for most of the LMPD members with body cameras… not to have their Axon body cameras activated at one point or another” during the events related to the raid at Taylor’s home, ” said the prosecution states.

“There is a reasonable basis to believe that disinformation has been presented to the general public regarding the use of body cameras by several members of the LMPD.”

The Louisville Metro Police Department is not commenting on pending litigation, he told CNN on Thursday.

A body camera video was released as part of the investigation into Taylor’s fatal shooting by the police department’s public integrity unit. But there was no video or body camera footage of the officers as they attempted to execute the search warrant at Taylor’s home, the Kentucky attorney general said last year as he announced charges against an officer. Body camera footage begins as area patrol officers arrive at the scene, he said.
Last year, the city settled a $ 12 million wrongful death lawsuit with Taylor’s family, which included a deal for the city to institute police reforms.

The request yielded bodycam recordings, depending on the costume

Lawyers filed the latest complaint after filing a June 1 open case request with the Louisville Police Department, looking for body camera audit trail logs for members of the police department in March 2020, according to the complaint.

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The audit trail identifies the time at which the sequence was recorded; the user; the name, ID and serial number of the device; as well as the identity of any person accessing the images, the time at which they were viewed and how they were processed, indicates the lawsuit.

As of Tuesday, lawyers had not obtained the requested information, although a police department employee indicated by email on June 14 that the task would take three weeks, according to the prosecution.

The police department previously shared in response to a request for records a list of its current or former members who had received body cameras by March 13, 2020, when Taylor was killed, the prosecution says.

“Assuming the body cameras were docked after Breonna’s murder, and that there was no tampering with the devices or associated storage prior to docking, audit trails should help verify if Metro told the public the truth regarding the existence of sequences, “prosecution states.

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“It is essential to know whether the local government is honest with the community about the issuance and use of body cameras,” he said.

“Breonna’s family has a right to the records,” her lawyer Sam Aguiar told CNN in a statement, adding that he was “tired of the administration playing its game when it comes to opening cases. files “.

Taylor was shot dead at night in her apartment by three officers from the city police department after forcibly breaking in with a no-knock warrant. She had fallen asleep in bed with her boyfriend, who thought the police were intruders and opened fire. Officers returned a barrage of bullets, shooting Taylor fatally.

The city fired three of the officers involved in Taylor’s death.

CNN’s Ray Sanchez, Michelle Krupa, Nicquel Terry Ellis, Jason Carroll, and Faith Karimi contributed to this report.

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