Breonna Taylor’s home was ‘soft target’ with minimal threats, police recordings show

Louisville, Ky., police officers had already identified the home of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician, as a “soft target” that would not present major threats ahead of the “no-knock” raid she was killed in, according to newly-released police interviews obtained by the Courier-Journal.

Taylor was killed on March 13 after three officers carried out the “no-knock” warrant, using a battering ram on her apartment door. The police at the time were investigating two men who they believed were selling drugs. The police also thought Taylor was receiving packages for the two at her residence.

Both Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were in bed at the time when police carried out the raid. After a brief exchange, Walker fired his gun, and the police fired back with some of the shots striking Taylor. 

It is unclear which of the officers specifically fired the shots that killed Taylor.

The officers “said they did not believe she had children or animals, but they weren’t sure,” Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, one of the three officers who fired his gun, said in a recorded interview with investigators nearly two weeks after Taylor was killed.

“Said she should be there alone because they knew where their target was,” he added.

After conducting surveillance earlier in the evening of March 13, police concluded there was minimal activity in Taylor’s apartment, with the television in the bedroom the only visible source of light, the newspaper reported.

Mattingly said the police “knew where their target was,” an apparent reference to Jamarcus Glover, a friend and former boyfriend of Taylor’s who was a target of the drug investigation.

His comments lend credence to claims by Taylor’s family’s attorneys, Sam Aguiar and Lonita Baker, that police already knew Glover was not in Taylor’s apartment and had no reason to forcibly enter it.

Police arrested Glover elsewhere the same night Taylor was killed.

An investigator asked Mattingly if he remembers the name on the search warrant, to which Mattingly responded, “Not offhand. We didn’t write it. We didn’t do any of the investigation. We did none of the background.”

On the night police killed Taylor, Det. Joshua Jaynes had secured five no-knock warrants for Taylor’s apartment, three neighboring houses on Elliott Avenue and a fifth on West Muhammad Ali Blvd. 

Jaynes has been placed on administrative reassignment, along with Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, another one of the officers who fired their weapons inside Taylor’s apartment. Brett Hankison, also involved in the incident has been fired. 

Aguiar, Baker and Florida-based attorney Benjamin Crump said the recordings are evidence of a “conspiracy to cover up Breonna’s killing since day one.”

“Enough is enough,” they wrote, according to the newspaper. “It is time for all the officers involved in that tragic night to be terminated from their positions and to be charged with the murder of Breonna Taylor.”