Officer in Louisville seems to point a weapon directly at the cameraman pic.twitter.com/5QdoC2fYW5
— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) May 30, 2020
Protests and riots spread to cities throughout the country last night, Louisville, Kentucky among them. Seven people were shot there during a protest Thursday night. While the George Floyd killing prompted most protests, the shooting death of Breonna Taylor during a plainclothes, no-knock LMPD police raid in March brought out most of the people on the streets in Louisville.
Louisville’s mayor announced a suspension of no-knock raids in the city yesterday.
During last night’s protests, a TV news camera crew was on the air as they were directly targeted by a LMPD officer with a less lethal pepperball gun.
The LMPD has a serious problem.
A police officer was seen on camera firing what appeared to be pepper bullets at a news crew during a live television broadcast of the second night of Louisville protests, prompting an apology from the Louisville Metro Police Department.
A crew from WAVE-TV was downtown in the Kentucky city Friday night, covering demonstrations over the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed by police in her own home in March. Police presence intensified around 9:45 p.m., as officers in riot gear stood shoulder-to-shoulder moving people down a key street near City Hall, the Courier Journal reported.
As WAVE-TV was on air, reporter Kaitlin Rust is heard yelling off-camera: “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!” Video shows a police officer aiming directly at the camera crew, as Rust describes the projectiles as pepper bullets.
“I want to apologize,” Louisville police spokeswoman Jessie Halladay told the Courier Journal. “It’s not something that should have occurred if she was singled out as a reporter.”
Halladay said she couldn’t tell who the officer was at this time, but that police would review the video again and “if we need to do any investigation for discipline, we will do that.”
– The Associated Press