Four Officers Charged in Raid that Killed Breonna Taylor
The officers in Louisville, Ky., fatally shot Taylor during a nighttime raid on her apartment. Prosecutors said officers had lied in order to obtain a search warrant for Taylor’s home.
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The Justice Department has announced a series of federal charges against four of the officers involved in the operation that resulted in the killing of Breonna Taylor, report the New York Times. Federal prosecutors accused three officers of knowingly including false information in an affidavit used to justify the raid and a fourth officer of firing blindly into Taylor’s apartment from outside, sending bullets flying into a unit next door where an unsuspecting family slept. None of the officers had been charged for what prosecutors say was the use of false information to obtain the search warrant that authorized officers to burst into Taylor’s home as she slept next to her new boyfriend.
The indictments could result in the first criminal penalties against the officers involved — two of whom have been fired, with the other two recommended for firing — but they fell short of public demands during months of protests to prosecute the two officers who shot and killed Taylor. Prosecuting those two officers could be difficult, some legal analysts have said, because they were returning fire during what they believed to be a legitimate law enforcement operation.
