LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Police files released Wednesday detail contacts between Breonna Taylor and a former boyfriend who was suspected of drug dealing but include him saying in a recorded jailhouse conversation on the day she was fatally shot by police that they had not “been around each other” in more than two months.
The files contain conflicting information about when the contacts ended between Taylor and her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. Other evidence suggests Taylor and Glover were together in the same vehicle a month before she was killed by police gunfire in her home on March 13.
In the jailhouse conversation, Glover said he and Taylor had not “been around each other in over two months.”
“I ain’t got nothing going on with Bre no more,” he told a woman whose name was redacted from the report.
But on Feb. 13, the evidence shows, a pole camera showed Glover driving a car registered to Taylor. He pulled up in front of a residence and went inside. A couple of minutes later, Taylor got out of the passenger side of the car, looked around for a few seconds and then got back in the vehicle. Glover soon left the home, got back in the car and drove off.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville emergency medical tech studying to become a nurse, was shot multiple times after being roused from sleep by police at her door. The warrant was approved as part of a narcotics investigation, and no drugs were found at her home.
The case has fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism. When police came through the door using a battering ram, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired once.
Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar said the release of the files was “long overdue.”
“We think the public is going to understand even more so why we’re so frustrated with how this investigation went down and why there was no criminal accountability,” he said by phone.
As for the investigative accounts regarding Taylor and Glover, he said: “You don’t see anything in these files that denotes any sort of connection between the two of them for the vast majority of February and March. So it still begs the question, what made them decide … to go hit this (Taylor’s) house.”
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said it was important to release the police investigation files as quickly as possible, after making “necessary redactions.” Much of the information in the files was included in records from the grand jury proceedings released last week, he said.
“I urge all to be sensitive that these files contain information and images that are traumatic and painful,” Fischer said in a release.
The files included investigative letters, interview transcripts, officers’ body camera videos, audio and video files of interviews, crime scene unit reports and search warrants.
Some items were redacted, blurred or withheld for privacy or legal reasons. Photos and videos of Taylor were “blurred out of respect,” police said. Audio of personal conversations that officers had while their body cameras were activated were redacted. Those conversations “had nothing to do with the scene or case,” police said.
Details of the chaos and confusion during the raid that resulted in Taylor’s death were revealed in 15 hours of audio recordings released Friday. They contained testimony and recorded interviews presented last month to the Kentucky grand jury that decided not to charge any Louisville police officers for killing Taylor.
Taylor’s name came up in the drug case at least in part because she had posted bail a few times from 2017 to January 2020 for Glover and another defendant, Darreal Forest, in amounts that went as high as $5,000, according to police files released Wednesday.
Officer Brett Hankison, who has since been fired, was the only officer indicted by the grand jury, which charged him with wanton endangerment for shooting into another home with people inside. He has pleaded not guilty.
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Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
