On Friday (Sep.25), Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump and the family of Breonna Taylor held a press conference following the grand jury’s decision to not charge any Louisville police officers with her death.
Kentucky Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, announced that only one officer,Brett Hankinson, would be indicted in the case for wanton endangerment for shooting into multiple nearby apartments. The other two officers Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove were not charged. Cameron said that his investigation found that Mattingly and Cosgrove were both justified in their use of force. He claims that a witness in close proximity corroborated that the officers knocked and announced themselves as police before barging into Taylor’s home. However, this has been highly debated since the case was made public in March. He also stated that Kentucky’s self defense law protects the two officers from criminal charges.
“There seems to be two justice systems in America, one for Black America and one for white America. What did Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron present to the grand jury? Did he present any evidence on Breonna Taylor’s behalf? Or did he make a unilateral decision to put his thumb on the scales of justice to help try to exonerate and justify the killing of Breonna Taylor by these police officers? And in doing so, make sure that Breonna Taylor’s family never got their day in court”, stated Benjamin Crump.
“Release the transcript so we can have transparency. And if you did everything you could do on Breonna’s behalf, you shouldn’t have any problems whatsoever, Daniel Cameron, to release the transcript to see you fought for all of Kentucky’s citizens”, he continued.
