You may remember Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who was injured in the March 13 raid that left Breonna Taylor dead, fired off a controversial email last fall, saying they did the “legal, moral and ethical” thing.
When @dctello & I had the chance to sit down with Mattingly last October, we asked him about the email.
"It was written with the intent of: The job we were doing was a moral job. The outcome, with the tragic death of Breonna Taylor, that wasn't the goal." courier-journal.com/story/news/loc…
By the time we sat down with Mattingly, former interim Chief Robert Schroeder had opened the standards investigation sparked by this note.
It just wrapped up two weeks ago under Chief Erika Shields.
If police accountability and government transparency are things you're into (🙋♀️), then yesterday was a big day in Louisville.
Let's recap, shall we?
🧵
First up, the Police Merit Board met yesterday.
They set the appeal for Joshua Jaynes, the former LMPD detective who sought the no-knock warrant for Breonna Taylor's apartment, for four days in June.
Fifty-five years after the Kentucky Open Records Act granted the public access to completed employee disciplinary records, the city of Louisville has decided to comply with the law.
Notably, this *should* apply to disciplinary records for police officers connected to the fatal LMPD shooting of Breonna Taylor, which the department defended withholding as recently as Thursday.
I say should because the records are not yet in my hands.
No-knocks have been a contentious issue for years, often uniting the left & right.
Taylor's death is not the first time these raids have been deadly. A @nytimes analysis found the warrants have resulted in at least 31 civilian and 8 police officer deaths. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
And, banning no-knocks could be politically popular for elected leaders because a majority of Americans support such efforts, including:
- 75% of Democrats
- 52% of Republicans