Breonna Taylor's mother says Louisville mayor, police trying to cover up injustice, denying lawyers documents
After George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis by a white police officer gave rise to massive protests across the nation, the mother of Breonna Taylor, an African American woman who became the victim of police brutality in March, spoke up about how she thinks her daughter's death is being swept under the rug.
Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer and her attorneys, Lonita Baker and Ben Crump, appeared on 'TMZ Live' on Wednesday, June 17 - a day after Crump released a statement on behalf of the victim's family, accusing the Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and the Louisville Police Department of moving at snail's pace when it comes to providing justice for Taylor.
As part of a lawsuit filed by Taylor's mother in April, the city was subpoenaed for records relating to her death. Friday, June 12, was the deadline for handing over Taylor's autopsy along with its communications with the government by the coroner's office and personnel files and sign in and out sheets for the three cops involved in her shooting by the police department. But none of the documents have been received so far by the victim's legal team.
"To date, Tamika and the community have been left in the dark," Crump's statement said. "Of all the cities dealing with the tragedies of officer-involved shootings and violence inflicted upon black lives, Louisville’s administration has been the least transparent, the slowest and the most frustrating. This administration simply believes it is above the law. This silence has gone on for far too long. You know what happened. You were there or you’ve otherwise been told. Your silence is complicity. Your honesty and decision to speak out against these actions and against racism will help rebuild this city and unite us all."
Even Mayor Fisher was supposed to give them records of the communications he'd had in relation to her death, Crump said. But Fisher told the departments to give only the city's lawyers and not Taylor's family the documents.
In the TMZ Live interview, Palmer said that she did not understand the reason for the holdup or why her the deadlines are not being met by the police and mayor since the documents that her legal team had asked for were not unreasonable. She added that the Kentucky Attorney General is on their side.
Taylor was fatally shot by plainclothes officers who fired dozens of rounds into her Louisville apartment on March 13, while she was sleeping. The police claim that they went to the home with a no-knock warrant as part of an investigation into drug offenses and started firing because Breonna's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired his gun first. He was charged with the attempted murder of a police officer. Neither of them had a criminal past.
The city's police department released a heavily redacted incident report earlier this week which bizarrely stated that Taylor had no injuries despite her having been shot eight times and witnesses saw her lying in a pool of blood. Baker said in the TMZ interview that one of the reasons behind the deliberate delay in handing over the official records could be because the police think they can cover up Taylor's death as none of the plainclothed officers who shot her were wearing any body cameras. However, he said there was reason to believe that the cops had footage of the incident but had not handed it over to the victim's lawyers.