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Officers who killed Breonna Taylor can't be fired or suspended yet due to union agreement with city
Police officers in riot gear stand in Louisville, Kentucky. Protests have erupted after recent police-related incidents resulting in the deaths of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis. (Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)

Officers who killed Breonna Taylor can't be fired or suspended yet due to union agreement with city

Lack of indisputable evidence

The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department officers who killed Breonna Taylor in March have not been fired or suspended — and according to an agreement between the police union and the city, they can't be disciplined yet, WAVE-TV reported.

Because there is no indisputable evidence of wrongdoing in Taylor's killing, no suspensions can be handed down until after the investigations into the incident are complete. There is no video or audio evidence of the incident, since the officers were not wearing body cameras, and the accounts of what actually happened that night are disputed.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said in a memo that if, like in the case of George Floyd in Minneapolis, there was some kind of clear evidence of wrongdoing, the officers could have already been fired. As it stands now, if the officers were fired or suspended, they could sue the city and potentially get their jobs back anyway.

The rules governing when an officer can be fired or suspended without pay before the completion of an investigation were set by a 2015 agreement between the city and the Fraternal Order of Police. The case is currently in the attorney general's hands, and there is no clear timeline of when the investigations will be complete.

Three LMPD officers — Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison, and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly — executed a no-knock warrant at Taylor's home after midnight on March 13. Officers suspected that Jamarcus Glover, Taylor's ex-boyfriend, was using Taylor's address to mail drugs.

The officers broke down the door with a battering ram. Kenneth Walker, Taylor's boyfriend, was also in the home. He is a legal gun owner and fired at the plainclothes officers whom he said he believed were burglars. Walker shot Mattingly in the leg. He was charged with attempted murder, but the charges were later dropped.

Taylor was shot eight times when officers returned fire. No drugs were found in the home. No-knock warrants have since been banned in Louisville.

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