Police in Louisville, Kentucky, released a nearly blank incident report Wednesday from the night Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her own apartment by officers. Despite the fact that the 26-year-old EMT was shot at least eight times during the no-knock search, the report listed Taylor’s injuries as “none.”
Police also checked “no” next to the box that says “forced entry” on the form, but witnesses and crime scene photos show officers used a battering ram to force entry into the apartment while Taylor was asleep.
Multiple attempts by CBS News to contact the department about the report were unsuccessful.
When officers were given the opportunity to explain how the fatal events of that night unfolded under the report’s “notes/narrative” section, they wrote only “PIU investigation,” for Public Integrity Unit.
The unit is responsible for “monitoring or conducting criminal investigations of department members including all officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths,” according to the Louisville Metro Police Department’s website. The document was printed by Theodore Eidem, a lieutenant in the department and commander of the Public Integrity Unit, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer responded to the report, saying: “It’s issues like these that erode public confidence in Louisville’s police department, and its ability to do its job.” He also apologized to the Taylor family for causing them further pain.
As for details, the four-page report — released nearly three months after Taylor’s death — includes only the time, date, case number and the victim’s name. It also identifies the officers involved as Sgt. Jon Mattingly, 47, Myles Cosgrove, 42, and Brett Hankison, 44.
Mattingly, Cosgrove and Hankison have been placed on administrative reassignment. None of the officers have been charged in Taylor’s death, despite widespread calls from the public to do so.
Fischer has said the city cannot currently terminate the officers. The contract between the Fraternal Order of Police and the city stipulates that the officers cannot be fired before the investigation is complete, CBS News affiliate WLKY reports.
Police have said the officers did not have body cameras on at the time of the shooting, but an attorney for Taylor’s family claimed in a new filing Wednesday that those same officers were previously assigned cameras, according to WLKY.
“We’ve got body camera footage from Brett Hankison in other situations and then we got a citation that shows that Myles Cosgrove just two months before this while serving a search warrant for the Criminal Interdiction Unit was wearing a body camera,” attorney Sam Aguiar said.
Officers entered Taylor’s home on March 13 with a warrant to search for illegal drugs, but, according to a suit filed by her family, none were found. WLKY reports that officials have said the officers were not required to wear cameras because they were plainclothes narcotics officers.
Department officials have claimed that officers knocked on the door and announced themselves but were “immediately met by gunfire” from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by her family claims that police didn’t identify themselves, and that Walker, a licensed gun owner, thought someone was trying to break in.
The FBI opened its own investigation into the death in May. Attorneys for Taylor’s family said at the time that they “look forward to further investigation, including by the FBI, into the chain of events that led to Breonna’s tragic and preventable death.”
