On Friday morning, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer held a press conference where he announced that one of the three officers involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor had been fired from the Metro Police Department. According to the Daily Beast, Brett Hankinson has been let go, though the mayor did not elaborate on why Hankinson was singled out and whether or not the other two officers involved, Sgt. John Mattingly and Det. Myles Cosgrove, were fired as well.
Breonna Taylor was killed after the three officers, using a no-knock warrant to legally bash down the door of her home, ambushed her after midnight. The EMT, who was sleeping in bed with her boyfriend, awoke and ended up being shot no less than eight times by police. Taylor was dead within five minutes of the police’s arrival at her home.
The police officer that was fired, Brett Hankinson, has a history of excessive force complaints and reprimands dating back to 2006 when he was put on administrative leave for shooting someone. Taylor’s death has led the Louisville City Council to unanimously vote to end the use of no-knock search warrants.
Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was killed more than three months ago. It has taken that long to announce the firing of an officer. So far no charges have been filed, and seemingly nothing has been done about the very cryptic, often conflicting information coming out of the Louisville Metro Police Department. It took the Louisville police three months to hand over the official incident report, supposedly filled out the night of Taylor’s death. When the press was finally allowed to see the report, it was filled with truly egregious inaccuracies and virtually no information.
Along with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor has become a symbol of the heinous racial injustices Black people face in America.
