Fatal Police Shooting Louisville
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Previous Post
Next Post

By Bruce Schreiner, AP

Staging their own protest, some Louisville police officers walked out on the mayor to express their frustration amid demonstrations in the Kentucky city over police interactions with blacks.

Video showed dozens of officers quietly filing out as Mayor Greg Fischer arrived at a roll call Wednesday. The walkout was an unplanned response to Fischer’s appearance, said Ryan Nichols, the local Fraternal Order of Police president. Nichols was not present at the walkout.

“They feel completely unsupported and disrespected by this administration,” Nichols told the Courier Journal. “They feel whatever he was going to say would have been nothing more than lip service, and he does not care about them at all.”

Fischer responded with a conciliatory statement recognizing officers for working long hours while “suffering insults and assaults” in dealing with protests. Some officers have been shot at during the unrest, showing the “extraordinary difficulty” they face, the mayor said Thursday.

“They are frustrated, and some of them expressed that frustration today,” Fischer said in his statement about the walkout. “I absolutely respect that. That doesn’t change my appreciation of the work they are doing, as I’ve expressed time and again. They have a very difficult job.”

The Democratic mayor has said he views police as “guardians of the community, not warriors.”

The walkout came amid a tumultuous stretch for Louisville police since the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman shot in her home by police detectives in March. Police have faced waves of demonstrations challenging their law enforcement tactics in the past week. Protesters are demanding justice for Taylor and George Floyd, a black man who died after an encounter with police in Minneapolis.

Amid the unrest in Louisville, some people brought Molotov cocktails and bricks to demonstrations, police have said. An armored police vehicle was shot but no officers were hurt, interim police Chief Robert Schroeder said Wednesday. Police found “incendiary liquids and devices” in a downtown park where protesters gathered, police Lt. Col. Josh Judah said Thursday.

Louisville police department protest
A volunteer holds rubber bullets in his hand that was collected with other debris as he cleaned after a night of protests in downtown Louisville, Ky., Sunday, May 31, 2020. The debris came from a previous evening of protest over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Police have used tear gas and fired pepper balls to clear demonstrators. The unrest turned deadly when a black man, David McAtee, was shot to death early Monday during an encounter with police and National Guard soldiers trying to clear a crowd from a parking lot to enforce a curfew. Witnesses said the crowd was not protesting.

Video released by police appears to show McAtee opening fire as officers approached his business, the interim police chief said. McAtee’s family said he was protecting his restaurant after officers began pelting people with pepper balls. Video of the confrontation appears to show a beverage can being shot off a table near the door of the restaurant moments before McAtee returned fire.

On Wednesday, Fischer announced plans to hire an outside group to perform a “top-to-bottom” review of the city’s police department. Louisville’s police chief was fired after it came to light that officers involved in McAtee’s shooting failed to activate their body cameras.

On Thursday, the mayor lifted the city’s dusk-to-dawn curfew, saying protests were “largely peaceful” the past couple of nights.

But the mayor warned that “criminal elements” were “hijacking” the protests, dishonoring the memories of Taylor and Floyd. Overnight, once demonstrators dispersed, officers have come under gunfire several times when protecting businesses in the city, Judah said.

Authorities made 176 protest-related arrests in the city as of Thursday morning, Judah said.

While urging peace in the city, the mayor called for mutual understanding between protesters and police, saying: “I just ask everybody to put yourself in each other’s shoes.”

Fischer also has faced pressure from protesters calling for the firing of the officers involved in the raid leading to Taylor’s death. He said he can’t legally fire police officers, pointing to state law and the collective bargaining agreement with the police union, which lays out a process to fire officers.

“If an officer is fired outside of that process, the officer can appeal, will appeal, to get their job back immediately, with back pay and even damages and have a platform then to sue the city for wrongful termination,” he said recently.

Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was shot eight times by narcotics detectives who knocked down her front door while attempting to enforce a search warrant. No drugs were found in the home.

Elsewhere, two men accused of trying to disrupt a peaceful protest this week in Murray, Kentucky, were arrested by local police – one for allegedly pulling up to the crowd in a car and pointing a gun at protesters, the other for allegedly pepper-spraying protesters, media outlets reported.

Previous Post
Next Post

89 COMMENTS

  1. yeah you forgot the no-knock bullshit warrant was the wrong address as well. LE are out of control. As a former SO, I quit due to the evil hatred that a majority of LEO have for their fellow human beings. They act as if above the law and let their years of dealing with douchebags turn into a disdain and apathy for anyone, regardless of color. George Floyd was no angel, and what he was arrested for was unforgivable, but we are not judge and jury. Due process is an American entitlement protected by law.

    • Counterfeit $20 is unforgivable? Illegal, needs to be addressed, but certainly not unforgivable. Certainly not worth murder.

        • was he a saint? no. Did he have criminal background? yes. Was he engaged in a violent crime when the arrest was made? No. Did he have current legal problems or warrants? Nothing seems to indicate that I have seen he was a wanted man or currently had warrants. I don’t know his entire history and don’t need to. The crime/issue he was being detained for did not warrant the level of aggression and violence that was witnessed and recorded. If he did his time then he has a record but that doesn’t make his day to day actions criminal. He might not be the sort of person you’d want to hang out with and perhaps he was sketchy, but being sketchy is not felony or misdemeanor as far as I know.

        • Past deeds and history that has already been paid for does not warrant, nor excuse the police brutality that was inflicted upon him. Hes still a person of the United States and has rights, rights which were violated, including those of life and due processes.

    • Mtn, my understanding is they went to the address on the warrent. I f that was not the intended address it could have been a typo at the clerk of the courts office. Or any other snafu before those guys crashed the door. But I guess you’re one of those rare individuals that have never made a mistake.

      • When you are operating under the authority of government, can imprison free men, and have the delegated privilege to kill, you better be 100%, mistakes are not acceptable.

        Every cop who walked out should be considered as resigning and should lose any and all accrued pension and any ability to collect unemployment.

  2. The videos showing cops beat up and assault the press and non violent protestors goes a long way in making police work more difficult. Hell, shooting observers watching peacefully on their porch is pretty damning…”light em up!” I can understand how hard it must be to be a cop responding to a riot or monitoring a protest but there’s a good number of bad cops that have made it much more difficult for the ones that mean well to work effectively and safely.

    • On one hand I get why they were fired at for being on their porch. Pretty hard for officers/military to know who is a threat and not a threat when it’s like the way it was. Basically, I mean they could ambush them halfway through the squad and cut their “platoon” in half (I’ll try to use simple terms so everyone understands, and not refer to a single element as a [firing] squad to avoid confusion as well). That would make their patrol ineffective and put them at great risk.

      On the other hand, the curfew they passed specifically said that people were allowed to be out on their property, more specifically, their porch or front lawn. How else can you provide a neighborhood watch without actually being out? Even if they had the luxury of having a window with the ablity to watch from one direction, they could still be seen as a threat to a patrolling force. So basically, given the information that people were given, they should have not been fired upon. You can use verbal commands and approach people like that without resulting to firing upon them. However, that ALSO puts those approaching at risk too. Gun, Gun, Gun! And then an approaching officer is fired upon… It’s a no win scenario. Personally, I think common sense could have been used here. “Hey, they are patrolling the hood, lets go inside real quick” and then nothing happens.

      When you allow rioters and looters to use your peaceful protest as cover, don’t expect for anyone to know the difference while the city is burning. Play it safe, defend yourself from a safe spot inside your property, and outside at that moment, was not safe. It wasn’t until the next day that police really began to see armed people standing outside providing security to their property, and as we all know, most of these places all this happened, had strict gun control laws. Even the “red states”, and why? Because they were in the “blue” portions of the cities and urban environments where a majority of the population does not believe in self defense until it’s too late.

      Lets face it: The people who got “lit up” in that video, were not exactly the types who understand why police exist, and what it takes to understand the violent nature of self defense. People like that group expect police response instantly to a phone call when one of their own is dying – as the city burns and police are overwhelmed, but are largely there to protest police simply existing in the first place. At least if you are going to have the mindstate that police are tyrants, be prepared to defend yourself against tyranny instead of just crying and saying “ouch, that is fucked” after being hit with a “non lethal” round.

      Any way you look at it, no winning here. You fire back to defend yourself and you become a criminal. Even if they were on your property, and you were within the guidelines of the curfew (lets just say that the police were on their property for the sake of the argument, but they were not in the video). You stand on your porch to watch your community, and you can be seen as a potential ambush. If you are in the mix, you are considered a threat, plain and simple. At least have an understanding of that and manuever as safe as you can.

      • I don’t disagree with what you said and my initial thoughts after watching the video was the residents were stupid to even have been on the porch in the first place. Once I heard that allowance was made for people to be on the porch the cops were out of line and the aggressors. You’re right, it was a no-win situation but the cops are getting to cosplay with real tools and the stress of everything is putting everyone on edge. The police should have said something along the lines of ‘please go back inside for yours/our safety’ and if they didn’t comply, oh well. “Light em up” and firing at them was not appropriate and could have gone wrong in so many ways.

        The riots under guise of protest is a load of crap. Despite a large bloc out there saying riots and looting are part and parcel and should be expected/allowed are full of it. There is nothing that disallows protesting and standing up for what you believe in while condemning and actively stamping out the violent aspects. My social media and news feeds are full of both liberal and conservative news and posting. I have seen many videos of protestors trying to stop looting and vandalism, very clearly stating that the use of those methods were not welcome. I don’t see a lot of those videos being picked up by the news. Speaking of news…and cops, there is a very disturbing trend of police targeting media and journalists. That, along with their iron fist approach of responding to nonviolent protestors is what continues to paint them in a very bad light.

        • I agree. But the protesters banded together a little too late. Still, Good for them for at least doing something to protect their community this time. Hopefully it’s a mindset that sticks with their next protest.

      • “On one hand I get why they were fired at for being on their porch.”

        The curfew was to clear the streets. Being on your own porch – the legal curtilege of your domicile – places you within the boundaries of your physical home, and definitely in compliance with the curfew order.

        Those cops should have been fired and charged with assault, similar to how the other “band of six” cops were fired and charged with assault, destruction of property, etc. when they surrounded the vehicle of a young couple (who were trying to follow orders and leave the area) and knifed the tires to prevent escape, broke the windows, tased them both, broke the driver’s arm and gave him lacerations resulting in 24 stitches, etc. Those cops all acted outside the boundaries of their authority and were charged.

        • @ Montana Actual yep it happened in Atlanta all 6 officers where charged rather quickly for what they did.

  3. The Louisville PD has been under pressure “..since the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman shot in her home by police detectives in March”, who were doing their best impression of armed home invaders, who were doing a search for a suspect they already had in custody. They were evidently expecting a parade to show the appreciation of a grateful city.

    If the police are going to act like an occupying force, expect to see insurgents.

    • Yea I don’t doubt for one second those home invaders were there on some tip trying to rob that home. Isn’t this the one they didn’t even have a search warrant?

      Also, it would be nice to see the death of internal investigations all around for police across the nation as the outcome of all this. They should be accountable to the same process of law as any civilian, not from within their own cults.

      • Montana Actual,

        “They [the police] should be accountable to the same process of law as any civilian, not from within their own cults.”

        Absolutely. As a former clergyman who watched the hierarchy close ranks and hide investigations, I have seen how poisonous, how destructive that practice can be. The problem is, who investigates when cops go wrong. Much of the investigative skills and tools rest with law enforcement.

    • It seems pretty obvious to me this is just another pretext to justify looting, rioting, and targeting cops. Yeah I am sure the whole city cared about that woman, and they don’t give a phuck when blacks slaughter each other, same logic we see in Chicongo, Bloodimore, etc. They only care because they can blame whitey, the cops, because it’s covered by the media so they want to show their face, and maybe to get a free TV and a fancy watch. In addition, if they can blame the cops maybe they can convince whoever wants to believe it, that time they got arrested it really, really wasn’t their fault, but the poleeeeeece did it. Same narrative, again, and again. Didundonuffin, racisssss, white privilege….

    • The judge signed off on the search warrant allowing them to perform the no knock entry, why are they never blamed for allowing it?

  4. Being a cop is hard and unrewarding. They should take one of the other, better jobs they’re qualified for, like, oh I dunno, CEO, or heart-surgeon. We mere civilians don’t deserve their sacrifice.

    • its all about who they are. Read Peele’s nine principles when it come to LE. Most LE don’t even know these, and they sure don’t live them.

      • The fact that they don’t know them sounds more like a issue with leadership than with the street cops. But do you think that the US is ready for a pragmatic, professional approach to police work?

        “Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.”

        Good luck with that one, just as much from the public opinion side as the police professionalism side.

        Nice to let me know about Sir Robert

    • I agree, hard, but disagree unrewarding. I as LE have helped many people, and it is very rewarding. The ones who cannot come in each day with a new attitude, but are pissed off every day due to the job should def go do something else.

      • I just feel bad holding them back from careers as business people and scientists and stuff, that they could have, since they totally have lots of better options and would’t just end up on minimum wage taking crap from Karens and asking a 19 year old supervisor for breaks.

        I love cops, as one should, and if you love something you should want it to be free.

    • You should also realize that individuals with skills, a higher level of education, more life experience….usually don’t want to be cops, because they can get better jobs and they don’t want to deal with scumbags shift after shift. It’s not like there are thousands of top notch candidates who will make outstanding cops waiting at the door. The best you can do is limiting your interactions with cops. Unlike many of those who are protesting, who can’t even keep their own life together yet they have the solutions to fix law enforcement. It’s often the same losers the cops have to deal with, they cannot live without the cops visiting them weekly or monthly. I have yet to be harassed by the cops anywhere. I don’t do stupid shiit, such as driving around with an obvious smell of weed coming from my shiity car, then blaming racism or whatever when I get pulled over. I don’t associate with shitbags either, so I don’t have to tell the cops the drug in the console was probably placed thereby the shitbag I only know by his/her nickname. Stupid people attract questionable cops, it’s that simple. I don’t stand in the middle of a t-storm while holding a golf club in the air either.

  5. So we give military toys to people who are not disciplined enough to stand in formation and take some shit from someone they don’t much care for?

    Hrmmmmm….

    • I’m not defending the cops. But the mayor should have been sacked along with the chief. He is the top of that chain of command. The buck stops here has meaning.

      • The chain of command goes both ways, no doubt.

        The fact that someone higher than you in the chain fucked up isn’t a license to do what you want. Respect for the system is what makes it work. This is both the top and the bottom just ignoring that.

        You don’t have to like someone, or even respect them as a person, but if chain of command means anything you have to respect the rank someone holds and go through the proper channels if they fuck up. Otherwise you end up with a breakdown that eventually leads to some flavor of fragging and that’s not a place we want to be.

      • So by that logic the President of the US is responsible for all the mistakes done by the military?

        • “So by that logic the President of the US is responsible for all the mistakes done by the military?”

          Actually, you are correct. Authority can be delegated; responsibility cannot. The rub is in the reaction of the responsible to the misuse of authority.

          If you are the president, and one of your military units wipes out a village of non-combatants, you must take forceful, effective remedial action all along the line, not just with the rogue unit, or individuals. If the failure can be traced directly to actions of the president, then the president needs to be disciplined.

          There are mistakes due to circumstances, and then there are “mistakes” due to systemic failure. In the modern world, both are too often considered the same.

    • “So we give military toys to people who are not disciplined enough to stand in formation and take some shit from someone they don’t much care for? ”

      On this one I’m feeling kinda like I did with the Amazon, / NY Sate / NY City fiasco: is there a way for them to all loose? Like that one, I couldn’t think of a way they could all loose. Like that one, they’re finding a way. Creative people.

      Also like the Amazon / NY State / NY City fiasco, other people get hurt the most. This time the collateral damage is so much greater.

    • Most cops are certainly not issued military weapons. Where I live only a couple of local SWAT agencies have fully auto rifles, patrol cops have semi auto rifles in their cruisers, my mid length BCM is probably a better AR15 than what most cops are issued around here.

  6. My home county used to have a special narc unit that liked to do no knock raids. Then one day they kicked in the wrong door, and the unit found its budget was set at $0 for the next fiscal year. No more no knock raids. It’s not hard to rein in the cops if the mayor really wants to.

    • narc units are the definition of tyranny. Like the ones who don’t consider entrapment as illegal. Setting up drug deals and such… it’s all the most fucked form of policing you can think of. The majority of those embedded in narc units are corrupt as fuck.

      • lots of money, semi victimless crime and the successful dealers who will kill your whole family if you go to far up the chain? What did you expect, boy scouts?

  7. These cop’s deserve what they get…and we got the National Guard parked around my town. Planning a “protest” on Saturday at a large park nearby. My village po-leece “response” sux. Flash banging babies,murdering a woman in her sleep,killing that young white kid in Maryland., covering for Arbery’s killer and on and on, blaming ME. WE are truly on our own!!!

  8. No sympathy for the Lewivull PD, or individual officers.

    That said….

    Something doesn’t smell right about the response to the George Floyd case. That is, why the Floyd case garnered more attention, and generated riots, whereas in Lewivull, a completely innocent woman was killed because police lacked the shooting discipline to prevent injury and death to people they could not see.

    IIRC, the police admitted they shot up the house because they didn’t know how many armed people might be inside. I think that is called “suppressive fire”. Why would police need to use suppressive fire executing an arrest warrant? Is the life of a person potentially committing a fraud more important, more valuable than an innocent bystander?

    The killing of George Floyd is represhensible, but why riots for Floyd, but not for Breonna Taylor?

      • “One was on video and lasted for 9 minutes. It’s that simple. Optics.”

        The other was more egregious, and involved more rogue cops. And the story wasn’t unpublished.

        • If you’re suggesting that race had something to do with it… I agree.

          But a video of a police officer kneeling on the neck of a dying man for minutes on end until the paramedics arrived and find him to be deceased is also important.

        • “If you’re suggesting that race had something to do with it… I agree. ”

          Wasn’t thinking in terms of “race”, but in terms of police out of control. Wondering why the Floyd death triggered what appears to be a structured, coordinated response, but the Taylor shooting resulted in not even a collective shrug.

          It probably is all about the lack of video in the first incident.

    • Because the people are not in control of anything, they follow unknown, invisible leaders who decide what is worthy of a riot and looting. The weekly savagery in Chicago obviously isn’t, the 5 blacks killed during these riots isn’t either.

  9. The female police officer in TX who shot a Black Man mistook the man for being in her apartment when she was in his apartment is doing time for her colossal mistake. The incompetent gungho narcs who shot the woman definitely deserve doing some time.

    Incidents like these are not new and have occurred to other races but nonetheless LE should know by now to measure twice and cut once otherwise they can and will wind up in the crossbar hotel themselves.

    • As I recall the female officer who shot the man in his apartment, thinking she was in her own, owned up to her mistake and accepted her punishment. That is the complete opposite behavior of so very many of these stories of police killing the wrong person, or someone who was not a threat to them.

  10. “…why riots for Floyd, but not for Breonna Taylor?”

    There’s video. It’s dramatic as an information screw-up is not. They had a plan, it fit the developed national situation, and their timing.

  11. Don’t know if their mayor is supporting them or not. The point here is the rank and file have problems within, and they are not dealing with them. Whether or not the mayor is on their side is a completely different problem.

  12. Guess who trained the cop that killed Philando Castile in Minnesota? Watch the video I posted for the answer.

  13. Why would anyone want to be a LEO now? If the “peaceful protesters”dont kill ya you’ll probably be fired just because you dont share the correct opinions!

  14. Any officer who expects an apology after a no knock raid, on the wrong house, will be waiting forever.

    • Another casualty of the War on Drugs that you love so much. But I am sure you don’t see the irony. Slavery is much more appealing to you than freedom

      • To Guy in WI
        As far as I can tell it’s Libertarians who are the only supporters of modern slavery in the United States. That is the drug addict enslaved by his addiction to the drug. However conservatives would like to put that drug addict out of their misery with a bullet to the head.

        When that drug addict tries to rob, rape, steal, break into private property commit, or murder. Because no one wants to hire a drug addict because everybody knows they’re completely unreliable. So the drug addict steals to pay for their fix.

        That’s the part that Libertarians like to ignore.

        Ps.
        A “functioning drug addict” is too small in numbers to count.

    • Your comment reminded me of a Judge Dredd strip where they did a no-knock raid on an apartment, realized they were raiding the wrong apartment, but then proceeded to do a “crime blitz” where they searched the apartment for infractions.

  15. seriously it’s society’s fault cops are entitled. People are addicted to this fantastical mostly-heroes/some-evil view of the popo. It’s childish, it helps you all pretend you’re not peasants being ruled regardless of your will with the po as the enforcers, holds together the fantasy that your values are worth more than a fart in the wind. You’re like people who get a puppy and don’t train it, then end up with a 100 lb problem dog. People like giving other citizens the business, you want people arrested for victimless crimes and you forget that what goes around comes around. You think you’re too special or righteous to get bit in the butt.

    It’s easy to blame the most useless, selfish cops when they go far enough to single themselves out, but don’t kid yourself. These cops are just doing what you told them to do, with your violent, romantic fantasies and negligence as an employer.

    • You can’t control your fellow citizens, sorry, can’t force them to be straight, religious, abstemious, if they don’t want to. Can’t make them throw away whatever they have and play catch-up to your little suburban life or whatever, and be graded by your standards, so it makes you feel important. Let that go, forget about it, you’ve been sold a lie by politicians.

      You could control your state and local employees if you wanted to though. You pay their wages, elect sheriffs and mayors. It’ll be an uphill battle with the unions, it’ll be boring, require some hard thinking like whether you need people to be roughed-up for weed, but it’s legitimately within your control. We can do this together.

  16. There are really 2 core problems with the police: 1) they are unionized, 2) the leadership, e.g., the chief of police, is appointed by the civilian political leaders. Cures: 1) dissolve all government unions – yes, all of them, 2) actually do defund the police, hand all law enforcement functions over to the county sheriffs, in most states the sheriff is elected by the people.
    If the sheriff is accountable to the people directly, and not beholden to the political machines in the big cities, maybe we can get the kind of service our communities deserve.

    • No Unions are a very important part of labor including Governement. What needs to happen is the Police Chief and probably all the supervisors need to be elected. Also problem cops need to be barred from law enforcement instead of the next town over hiring them. 3 strikes your out works for me.

    • Not all agencies are unionized, in my neck of the woods in FL some sheriff offices are not unionized and they have similar problems than the unionized, local agencies (usually PD). I don’t think that’s a factor, except maybe in bigger cities and agencies like the NYPD.

    • Doing every stupid thing they can think of to get hurt, then edit videos and blame white cop and the most likely racist dog too. What a bunch of low IQ parasites, this whole thing is a pretext to act like a fool and to make a mess. They don’t give a shiit about Floyd, those folks cannot function in a normal, western society. I worked in the hood recently, apartment complex could have been decent, but they trash it non stop. Dirty diapers and chicken bones in the stairs, it’s filthy, loud, they park and drive like shiit, it always smells like weed…

    • The voices yelling in the background are something else…..what did they expect to happen?

      Play stupid games with a police dog…

  17. Good Cops leaving the profession in droves. 6 NYPD resigning a day in addition to usual expected attrition.

    Soon only the bad cops will be left.

    • “Soon only the bad cops will be left.”

      Could it be the bad cops resigning in droves? Because they know their cover is being removed?

      • One would hope but I would never expect such a fortuitous event. Gotta love the feeling that the other shoe is ready to go.

      • Good people can get as good or better job somewhere else. Lousy people know they’re lousy and are lucky that they have their job, so they will cling to it instead of interviewing with agencies that will know they’re lousy.

        • “Lousy people know they’re lousy and are lucky that they have their job, so they will cling to it….”

          There’s that.

  18. Maybe if they stopped killing people while they’re in their home they’d get more respect?

    Maybe if they stopped responding to people protesting police violence with more police violence they’d get respect?

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here