Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident

0:00

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Let's start from the beginning because we have John here to just tell us the story. A lot of people don't know about what went down with Brenna Taylor. I'm sure many activists will just accuse you of lying. But at the very least, if you would like to give us the breakdown of the story, I know you have a book about it, but you can just tell us what happened and we'll go from there. Yeah, I'll give you the 5,000-view story of it. So that night, we were asked to help. Do you know the date specifically? Yeah, so...

0:24

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

March 12th is when the briefing was. We didn't breach the door until March 13th, which is Friday night, full moon. I came out from the briefing and I had two flat tires. It started pouring down rain. I got soaking wet while I was moving my stuff from one car to the other. So everything was just kind of one of those nights. What was the briefing? It was for, so we had two separate briefings. SWAT did their briefing because they were executing the Warren Stone Elliott.

0:49

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

The guys who were assisting them that were going to do the searches were at our brief along with us. All the houses that we were doing were on the board. They showed above it. Fortunately, I took a picture. It showed above it.

1:02

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

No knock, no knock, no knock. It got to ours. It said knock and announce. So they had changed it. They were all signed as no knocks. So technically we served a no knock warrant, but it was not served as a no knock. It was signed by a judge as a no knock. But once it did not fit the parameters of a no knock, we didn't serve it as a no knock. We did the thing we're supposed to do. We corrected it and didn't do it. So the only reason it was written as a no knock is because Jamarcus Glover's history.

1:28

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

He had five, I believe it was five felony pending cases for guns and drugs. He had ran from the police. And these were active cases, not including the ones he'd already been charged with and pled guilty to previously for Mississippi and Louisville. And so.

1:44

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Once they realized they had a ping on his phone and a tracker on his car, they knew he would not be on Springfield. So they said, we're not doing that one as a no-knock because it didn't justify being a no-knock. He wasn't there. And they said, we think it's only Breonna Taylor at the house. We don't think there's any kids, no dogs, nobody else there with her. Okay, cool. They've been watching this house for a while. So I had assumed that they're...

2:07

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

intelligence was good on the house that it was just going to be Breonna Taylor. They said, she's a heavyset black female. Give her time to come to the door. Give her more time than usual. Because normally it's about 10 seconds. You're banging on the door, police search warrant. If you don't hear anything, then you go ahead and hit it. So this one, when we went, we showed up and we gave it 45 seconds to a minute. It was, I think, six different cadences of knocking on the door and yelling police search warrant. The first two were just regular knocks, hoping she would just come to the door, be quiet. The neighbors wouldn't know.

2:34

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

After she didn't come, started banging an open hand really loud, yelling police search warrant. The neighbor upstairs heard us, came out, argued with our guys. They kept telling him to go inside. He didn't want to go back inside. So finally he did. We hit the door. Once the door opened, I could see from right to left in the living room, and I was on the left of the door jam.

2:55

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

And Mike, the guy who did the ram, was on the right because you never stand in the fatal funnel in case somebody shoots through the door. So once the door came over, I scanned to the right to the left. Everybody at this point is yelling, police search warrant, police search warrant. When I turned the corner, I had to step right in the doorway just to see down this hall. And as soon as I did, there was an ambient light coming out from the TV down the hall. We had lights on our guns. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw two people overlapping each other. It was like a big blob, but with a tall head and a short head. And they were both down in this hallways only.

3:24

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

maybe three, four feet wide at the most. So very narrow hallway because it had an inset where Kenneth was standing that goes into the next bedroom. And that's Brianna's boyfriend? Yes. It's her boyfriend at this time. And so as soon as my eyes got to Kenneth, I never even got all the way to Brianna, even though they were like, it was basically one person, but I never got to her face. As soon as I got to where Kenneth was, I could see the gun because the flashlight, all I saw was the metal tip of the gun. And my brain was like,

3:48

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Uh-oh, and boom, it was over. He shot. He shot first. Yes, he shot. I felt it hit my leg. I returned fire. I got four rounds off. Yeah. Was the first shot fired? It hit you? Yes. So you opened the door.

4:02

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Kenneth, do you know his last name? Walker. Walker. Fires one round, striking you in the leg. Right. And then the other officers return fire? Correct. I fired four. I got offline is what it's called. So boom, boom, boom, boom, real quick. Four shots. Got behind the door frame, came around, shot two more. At that time, I felt my leg, realized there was a ton of blood. And I've seen, you know, countless gunshot victims over.

4:24

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

21 years. And a normal leg shot that doesn't hit an artery is it doesn't bleed much. I mean, you might have a trickle of blood down your leg. That's it. Well, this one, as soon as I put my hand on my thigh, I could feel just a glob. And I was like, oh, man. And I announced at the door. I mean, everything happens so quick. So I got six rounds off in probably less than two seconds. I mean, it's how quick this whole exchange happens. It's over before you even realize what's going on. Training kicks in and you just react. So I remember yelling, it hit my femoral artery.

4:51

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

And I sat down on my bottom because I thought, I can't, I'm going to pump the blood out. That's what I was thinking in my head. And as I did that, Miles stepped up and was shooting.

5:00

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

ready. And I thought, I can't stay here. I'm going to get shot by crossfire. So I jump up and I hobble out and I fall between the cars. And my lieutenant comes up and they start working on me. I'm like, dude, I need a tourniquet. Get me a tourniquet. And they finally got one, got it on and got the bleeding stopped. But at that time, people say, well, why was there so many shots fired? 12 Seconds in the Dark, the book, the title comes from the time that door came open.

5:27

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

until it was silent from no gunshots. The chaos stopped. And that was about 10 to 12 seconds from what we've tried to reenact it and see. And so much happened, so much chaos, so many things go through your mind in that 12 seconds that it's just amazing how much damage can be done in that small amount of time and how much aftermath damage the city, the country, the nation from 12 seconds. And it's just, it's sad. So you get out of there.

5:55

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

You say you collapsed between two cars. What was the distance between the door and where you ended up on the ground with getting medical attention? So I'll try to give you a visual of it. If you're looking at an apartment complex and they have the inside where the stairs go up to the top, you've got that little foyer area, which is maybe, I don't know, 12 feet deep and 10 feet wide. That's where we were at. This was ground floor, right? Ground floor. And so I was all the way on the inside. So I hobbled out of there, then a sidewalk, a curb.

6:23

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

and then the length of a car. So I went down between the cars, butt scooted to the edge of the cars, and that's when my lieutenant grabbed my vest and pulled me out and got to work. But the thing about Kenneth Walker, you know, he keeps saying he didn't know it was the police. First they said nobody knocked and announced. Then he comes back later and goes, yeah, we heard him knocking. We heard him banging. And I thought it was her ex-boyfriend is what he said.

6:47

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

So if you thought, but then he said he thought somebody was doing a home invasion. If you thought that, why would you have your girlfriend? They got up, got dressed. He retrieved a gun. Why would you tell your girlfriend, come in the hall with me? I'd imagine if he thought it was her boyfriend. You know what I mean? Like they genuinely thought it was her ex-boyfriend. But if you're that scared for your life that you're willing to shoot, wouldn't you have her call 911? Stay in here and call 911. Get them over here. I mean, you know, it's a tough question about.

7:14

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

whether or not somebody wants to call the police to a situation that's about to get hot, whether they've been thinking about it, how someone reacts. I mean, you know, you're talking about 12 seconds. They hear a big bang. It's about 45 seconds. I can't assume these people would react the same way I would. I can't assume they trust cops, you know, to come and resolve the problem. But more importantly, I mean, it's even fair to say they're not going to call the cops because they might be involved in illicit dealings or something. And so this is street justice. That's probably more the case. So when they downloaded his phone after the fact.

7:43

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

they found text messages in there with him and other guys. You know, there's pictures of him with his gun, which is no big deal. Everybody can have a gun. But they had it also with a bag of, like, pills that were probably fentanyl pills because they were the same little blue pills, weed, whatever. Nobody cares about weed. And so...

8:00

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

But he was selling. There's text messages in there of him selling all this stuff to different people. That's irrelevant. The one that stuck out was the one where these other guys said, hey, do you want to hit this lick with us? And he said, well, how much is it worth? And they said 20 grand. And he was like, it's fine, but I always do my homework first. Meaning he sets up, watches people, see how they react. And again, this guy didn't have a job. He was getting ready to start. One day it was UPS. The next day it was postal. I don't know which one it was. But he was getting ready to start a job. That's always the case. Getting ready to get my life together.

8:28

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

And so a lot of times what these drug dealers will do, they'll rob other drug dealers. That's just common practice. They won't report it to the police because what are you going to say? They stole my drugs and money? But the way they do it is they'll go up and they'll bang on a door and yell police. And when that door gets opened, they've got a gun in and they rob them. That happens all the time. You think that's what he thought was happening? I don't know if that was his MO of previous cases that he had done. So he thought, uh-oh, it's coming back on me. I don't know.

8:57

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

It's hard to say because he's lied so many times, we don't know the truth. There's the simple...

9:03

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

general circumstance, nuance excluded, that I've mentioned in the past. That if you're a law-abiding citizen armed legally and someone kicks your door in and you don't know it's the police, you have a right to defend yourself from a perceived home invasion. I agree. Absolutely. There have been many stories I've seen, read about, or a couple at least, where plainclothes cops are serving a no-knock warrant or something and then they get shot and the person ends up going to prison or whatever and I'm like...

9:27

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Dude. I think that's horrible, yeah. But when you say plain clothes, let me correct this because this was a big sticking point on ours too because we were in what's called plain clothes. However, we had tactical vest on that said police across the front. We had our badges on, you know, seven white dudes going to a black guy's house. It's just not the norm that's going to go rob a drug dealer. It's just not – it doesn't happen.

9:51

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Go ahead. I was going to say, let's move forward with the story a little bit and talk about the lies. So the big narrative that comes out is that Branagh Taylor was sleeping in her bed and you guys...

10:00

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

is just basically shot into the house willy-nilly, killing her while she slept. Not true. Yeah, the big thing was we came in in the middle of the night, didn't knock, didn't announce, and killed her in her sleep. So she was sleeping before we got there. But Ben Crump's the one that kept pushing this. She was asleep in her bed thing. Sleep over, over, over. He came out initially and said, they even had the wrong house. They weren't even supposed to be there. And I'm going, oh my God, we've got the search warrant. But our city refused to put it out.

10:27

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

I'm like, just show them the address and name on it. It's all you got to do. This doesn't hurt the investigation one bit. You mentioned before that...

10:36

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

They were gentrifying the area? Yes. Something was going on with that? What was that about? So down on Elliott, which is where Glover was at, where SWAT did the no-knocks, for years they had been buying up these properties. What they would do is they would go in and they would condemn them, buy them from the homeowners for a buck apiece. And so the city had taken the majority of that block. In 2000, I believe it was 18, they had the University of Kentucky's engineering department or architectural department draw up plans for this new,

11:06

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

revitalized area and it looked nice and you do want areas like that to be revitalized but you've got to do it the right way you can't just go in and bully people out of their houses and basically steal it as a government I don't agree with that so what they did was they sent a map out through their through their email and it had the houses they already had marked off and it showed the houses they needed to still get

11:28

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

So in January, they started this new unit up called PBI, Place-Based Investigations. They got it from Cincinnati. And what this was supposed to do is go after your most violent or your most troublesome areas to clean up those neighborhoods. Because even in these poor neighborhoods, 80% of the people are great people. They really are. They're just stuck in an area that they can't get out of. And I think the government resources could be used so much different to get these people on their feet and out.

11:57

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

For instance, and this is off topic of this, but this is just my little rant on this kind of stuff. Because when you keep these people entrapped like this and enslaved with all the government assistance and their inability to get out, then it causes these problems to compound. And these guys are looking for ways out by selling drugs or robbing people or doing whatever they have to do to survive. I mean, it does become survival of the fittest in some of these areas. If you go in these areas at night, it's like a third world country.

12:21

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

I mean, you wouldn't believe it. And that's the problem with most of the citizens. They don't live in those areas, so they don't know what it's like when you go after dark and there's gunshots and there's fights. I mean, it's just you go, oh, my goodness, this wasn't like this two hours ago. You know, when the sun was up, it's just different. But I think they could go in and say you're on Section 8 or assistance. Instead of just constantly giving you money, why don't they?

12:46

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

I mean, these women get trapped. Okay, here's your assistance, but if you make X amount of money, we're taking that assistance away. Why don't you let them succeed in their careers for five years and then slowly taper off the assistance while they're achieving this so they can get out of this environment? Right, I agree. I mean, then in the end, the government's saving money because you're not keeping these people on your payroll for...

13:07

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

their entire life and you're helping the community by getting them out and getting them established and then 15 20 years from now when they're having kids and their kids are having kids you've got a totally different it's like turning the pond over every year you know and you get you get new stuff but on this case the gentrification he was

13:24

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

They came in, and a guy from the mayor's office came in every single week and met with this unit and all the bosses. All the assistant chiefs would come in, and they would come in. They would talk about what they needed to do to secure the rest of this. What were you doing? They were going right on the whiteboard. I was never involved in any of those meetings. Didn't care. Didn't want to be. I had my own job. But they were there every single week.

13:47

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

And when this all came down, the mayor was like, well, I don't know why they were there. I have no idea. And when that came up, the gentrification, he was like, I didn't know anything about that. But his name's on the emails. He knew. This was a guy from his office conducting these meetings. A woman that he ended up having an affair with, allegedly.

14:06

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

was the project manager for this thing. So there's a lot of things that are going on. This sounds like what actually happened with the story is dirtier and bigger than people realize. I mean, when you mentioned that, I'm like, this sounds like there's probably real estate developers involved who go to the city and say, we want to turn a profit. So he says, we're going to clean up this neighborhood. You got it. What's funny, he uses a certain friend.

14:29

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

I won't say his name, but he uses a certain friend. They already redeveloped one end of the town that was a real bad end of town. It's called Nulu now, and they brought in restaurants, and it's neat. It's kind of a yuppie area.

14:43

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

The same developer got all those bids, all those contracts, and he was the one that was going to get these. So there was a lot of under-the-table deals going on. And unfortunately, the police are always used as the pawns, like we were talking about earlier with the vaccine stuff, mandates enforcing that. Yep.

15:00

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

can use the police who have the authority as my pawns to go do it, then I can look back and go, it wasn't me, it was the cops. Do these cops just need to say, I'm not going to... 100% they do. Yes, they do. Well, I want to carry on the story though. So here you are now, you wake up in the hospital. Grant Taylor has died. Did Kenneth get injured in any way? No. So what happens? You pass out on the ground? No, I stayed alert, conscious the whole time. And I've told people, and I've told people, because I've...

15:28

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Went around and talked to some people about critical incidents. And you're not required by law to give a statement right away. Because in critical incidents, a lot of people, if you wait a few days, you start remembering stuff that for your own protection you blocked out. But for some reason, when I woke up, it was like it was burned into my brain. And I say I wish I would have at least, if I didn't give my official statement, I wish I would have recorded it that day.

15:54

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

because it hadn't changed one bit. I mean, everything I said then, I said now. The only things I forgot, I forgot I had put a ball cap on that night because I got rained on, and I'm real conscious about my hair, so I threw a hat on because it was all messed up. So I forgot about that. But other than that, it was like it burned in me. But I waited 12 days to give a statement because I was in the hospital then recovering on pain meds and all that.

16:18

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

That became an issue because they were like, oh, it's a cover-up. Why do you wait so long to give a statement? I'm like, oh, my gosh. This is my statement. It hadn't changed. Every interview is the same. So what did you ask me on that particularly? No, just what happens next. So you're injured, you stay up all night, you're in the hospital. I'm wondering what happens when you realize this was turning into a national story. Was it riots are starting up or the news is picking it up?

16:45

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

One of the first things I asked my wife, I was like, man, was anybody hurt? Because I didn't know. I didn't know if anybody had been shot in the apartment. Because, you know, I was busy trying to tend to myself and stay alive. And they told me, yeah, it was a female. And I was like, crap. Because I knew when I came there, the taller one was probably a guy. I couldn't pick him out.

17:04

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

But, you know, you kind of know you can tell body types. And I was like, man, because every cop's biggest fear is at least mine. I can't speak for everybody. My biggest fear in this career has always been I don't want to accidentally shoot or kill the wrong person. I mean, that's just a thought that you're constantly playing because there's been other times I could have been involved in shootings where people pulled guns or I've been shot at in another warrant and didn't return fire because I couldn't see through what I was shooting at. And because the fear is always.

17:34

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

I only want to do the right thing. I don't want to overstep these boundaries and in this position take somebody's life because it's a pretty heavy burden. And when that happened, I was like, oh, my goodness. Because after Ferguson, everything, every cop shooting that comes out now, we go.

17:52

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

Were they black or white? You know, not was it a good shoot or bad shoot, which should be all that matters. Color should not play any relevance to it, but it does. So ever since Michael Brown, that's the question, were they black or white? Well, I knew Brown was black because I'd seen her picture prior to this. And so I was like, my goodness, you know, this isn't going to be good. I just kind of knew it. And however, COVID, the nation shut down on March 13th also. That's when everything shut down. President was on every day or governor was on every day.

18:21

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

It kind of got pushed down. And I think that's what our mayor and our police chief counted on. Oh, okay. Well, if this is the big story, we can just, this will go away. Something else will come up. And then Ahmaud Arbery happened. And Ben Crump was hired on Ahmaud Arbery. Well, then after that, one of the attorneys on Breonna Taylor's case for her mother knew Ben Crump. She had worked with him on a case. So she called him and said, hey, can you help us on this one?

18:49

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

So he came into town and then things had already been, there had already been lies or misconceptions. And part of that was the police department's fault because they didn't share any information with Breonna Taylor's family either. So I understand their frustration. I get it. But then once he got on, it was a whole new animal, man. It was because he already had the national spotlight from Ahmaud Arbery. So then now Breonna Taylor's there. And so I could feel.

19:15

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

the tension in the city starting to creep up. You could feel it. And I started reaching out to people. I even reached out to our city council president who used to be a police officer. He was my training officer in the academy.

19:27

S… Speaker 2 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

And I said, man, I texted him. I've still got it on my phone. I was like, here's all the lies they're saying. And I listed it as pages of text. And I said, here's what really happened. And I told exactly what I've told you guys. And I said, the mayor won't say it. What can we do? And he said, yeah, the mayor's refusing to say this stuff. I'll hold a press conference Monday and get it out. Never happened.

19:47

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

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20:00

S… Speaker 1 (Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident)

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Officer Involved Tells The TRUE STORY Of The Breonna Taylor Incident

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