Former American policewoman who fired 10 shots into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, convicted of violating civil rights

A former Kentucky police officer was convicted in federal court Friday of violating civil rights in the killing of Breonna Taylor, whose death sparked police reform and racial justice protests across the U.S. in 2020.

The Justice Department said in a statement that Brett Hankison was convicted on one count of civil rights violations.

Although Hankinson’s shots missed Taylor, a black woman who was killed during a police raid on her home, he fired blindly through a bedroom window with closed curtains and blinds.

Hankison is the first officer convicted by federal police in connection with Taylor’s 2020 death. Two other officers remain charged with falsifying a search warrant affidavit, and another pleaded guilty to search warrant charges.

However, no one was ever charged with Taylor’s murder.

The deaths of Taylor, 26, and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests against racism in the United States and beyond. injustice and police brutality.

“The Department of Justice will continue to vigorously defend the civil rights of every person in this country to be free from unlawful police violence,” Deputy Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a Justice Department statement.

Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020, when they heard a noise outside the door.

Walker, believing it to be a burglary, fired his gun, wounding one police officer.

Police, who obtained a controversial no-knock drug arrest warrant, fired more than 30 shots into the back, fatally wounding Taylor.

Hankison claimed he fired to protect his colleagues.

This was Hankison’s second time appearing in federal court: his first trial ended in a mistrial.

Also on Friday, the jury found Hankison not guilty of violating the rights of Taylor’s neighbors because he fired through a sliding glass door, also with the blinds and curtains drawn.

The Justice Department said Hankison will be sentenced next March.

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