Louisville mayor joins outrage over ‘reckless’ leak of police memo about Breonna Taylor

The mayor of Louisville has joined growing outrage over the leak of a police memo that revealed new information about the botched no-knock raid that killed Breonna Taylor.  

The Louisville Metro Police Department memo outlined previously-undisclosed details about the evidence investigators used to obtain the search warrant officers used to storm Taylor’s home on the night they shot her dead.  

The memo, which was written several weeks after Taylor’s death and was leaked to the media last week, focused heavily on links between the hard-working EMT and the main target of the narcotics probe that prompted the warrant – her ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover. 

Critics have accused police of leaking the memo in an effort to smear Taylor and justify the deadly raid. 

‘Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy. Period,’ Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said as he charged that the leak was meant to ‘sway opinion and impact the investigation’, per NBC News.

‘It is deeply reckless for this information, which presents only a small fraction of the entire investigation, to be shared with the media while the criminal process remains ongoing.’ 

The 39-page memo included details that weren’t provided to the judge in the search warrant application, along with evidence that came to light after Taylor’s death.  

It does not mention anything about the officers’ use of deadly force or whether they violated department policy. 

Taylor, 26, was shot eight times while sleeping in her bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker when three plain clothes officers executed a no-knock arrest warrant at her Louisville apartment on March 13. 

Outrage continues to build across America over Taylor’s death as – five months on from her slaying – the three cops continue to walk free of all charges.

The leaked memo states that Taylor, who had no criminal record, had known the target of the narcotics probe – convicted drug dealer Glover – since 2016. 

Police said they believed Glover may have been keeping drugs or money in Taylor’s apartment, but neither was found there. 

Glover had already been arrested at his home 10 miles away and taken into police custody before the midnight raid at her address. 

The 30-year-old broke his silence last week to say that Taylor had no connection to illegal drug activity and that police used false information to obtain their warrant for her house.  

‘The police are trying to make it out to be my fault and turning the whole community out here, making it look like I brought this to Breonna’s door,’ Glover told The Courier-Journal on Wednesday. 

‘There was nothing never there or anything ever there, and at the end of the day, they went about it the wrong way and lied on that search warrant and shot that girl out there,’ he added. 

Glover was arrested again on Thursday, hours after his interview with the Journal, on charges including trafficking a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to WDRB. 

His arrest came after the leaked police memo revealed he had mail sent to Taylor’s address and gave her phone number as his own in the run-up to her death.  

Glover denied Taylor was involved in any illegal drug activity and said he had been using her addresses for deliveries because he didn’t want them to get stolen. 

‘Nothing ever been illegal there,’ he told the paper. ‘Getting shoes and clothes coming through the mail is not illegal. Nothing illegal at all.’ 

Taylor’s name is only mentioned twice in the search warrant affidavit, once in reference to her address, and a second time regarding a car which police said belonged to her that was once spotted outside Glover’s alleged drug house. 

Officers had requested a search warrant at Taylor’s home, claiming they had spotted Glover leaving the apartment with a ‘suspected USPS package in his right hand’. 

They also claimed they verified through a ‘US Postal Inspector’ that Glover was using her address to receive packages however, a postal inspector later denied police had used his office for that information, the Courier-Journal reported.  

The leaked police memo included additional details about the evidence supporting the warrant request.  

The document is undated but features information from a May news memo, indicating that it wasn’t finalized until two months after Taylor’s death.  

The police department did not respond when asked by NBC about why the memo was written. 

‘At a time when the public was being assured that the department was doing a thorough and impartial investigation into Breonna’s killing, [the department] was actually preparing a lengthy, one-sided report regarding things that their officers were unaware of at the time they killed Breonna,’ Taylor’s family lawyer Sam Aguiar said. 

Louisville Metro Police Department Interim Chief Robert Schroeder called the leak ‘simply not helpful’ to the investigation and ‘irrelevant to our goal of obtaining justice, peace and healing for our community’ in a news conference last week.

The memo revealed Taylor’s ex-boyfriend had his bank account registered to her address, gave her phone number as his own and allegedly borrowed a car hired under her name that would later be connected to a murder investigation of one of his associates. 

The report was written by an investigator in the Place Based Investigation team which was working on the drugs case against Glover – but which is not part of the probe into Taylor’s death.  

On February 14, just one month before Taylor died, Glover passed off Taylor’s phone number as his own when he tried to file a complaint against a cop for towing his car, the report reveals.  

In the following 10 days, investigators verified that Glover was also using Taylor’s home address – 3003 Springfield Drive – and that her property was listed as the mailing address for his Chase Bank account, it shows.

Mail addressed to Glover was reportedly seized from Taylor’s apartment in the aftermath of her shooting.  

The report also documents a series of prison phone call transcripts between Glover and Taylor, when the convicted drug dealer was behind bars.

In one conversation on January 3, Glover asked Taylor if she had talked to ‘Doug’, identified as Adrian Walker.

‘You talk to Doug?’ Glover asked Taylor.

‘Yeah, I did,’ Taylor responded, Wave reported. ‘He said he was already back at the trap.’

Adrian Walker, 27, was the second suspect alongside Glover sought by police in the raid at Taylor’s home. 

He was also not present at the property when police broke in.    

Two hours later, Glover and Taylor spoke again on the phone where he thanked her for checking on him, to which she allegedly responded:  ‘When you’re around I stress more… I just always be worried about you… not like you and b****, but just period with the police, like all kind of s***.’

In another call that day the two said they loved each other.  

Between January 2016 and January 2020, Glover called Taylor 26 times from jail, the records state. 

The report also states that on January 2, the day before these calls were made and when Glover was not in police custody, he pulled up to ‘trap house’ 2424 Elliott Avenue driving Taylor’s car. 

Taylor was allegedly spotted on surveillance visiting the home on occasion.

Glover’s vehicle – a red Dodge Charger – also made six trips to Taylor’s home in January where he was sometimes pictured collecting packages, the report says. 

The documents also allege in 2016 a vehicle rented under Taylor’s name was found with a dead body inside. 

The deceased was Fernandez Bowman – brother of Damarius Bowman, a known associate of Glover’s who has been arrested with him on several occasions, they state.

Taylor told cops at the time she didn’t know the victim and had let Glover – who was present at her home when officers arrived to question her – use the vehicle after dating him for several months. 

The report says she gave cops her phone number – the same number Glover later claimed was his in February this year. 

The documents also state Glover claimed in a jailhouse phone call to the mother of his child just hours after Taylor’s slaying that the EMT had $8,000 of his money. 

‘Bre got down like $15 (grand), she had the $8 (grand) I gave her the other day and she picked up another $6 (grand),’ he said on March 13, according to the documents. 

He then claimed: ‘Bre been handling all my money, she been handling my mone … She been handling s*** for me and cuz, it ain’t just me.’

Three months later on April 24, the dealer also told the woman cops ‘took my car’ and found Taylor’s address on a bank statement in the armrest.

‘Boom it got Bre’s address on there,’ he said. 

Attorneys for Taylor’s family blasted investigators for withholding the report, saying they only learned of its existence after its leak to the press. 

‘It’s unfortunate that the city did not provide LMPD’s post-death report and that we only learned of it until it was leaked to the media,’ the family’s lawyer Sam Aguiar told WAVE 3 News on Wednesday.

‘Either way, it doesn’t change whether she should’ve been killed or the unlawful actions surrounding her killing.’  

He added: ‘Good or bad, either way, everyone has the right to know all the facts in association in the case.’ 

Sadiqa Reynolds, the CEO of the Louisville Urban League, questioned the motive behind the report’s release.  

‘I think that whoever leaked that report wants to say, “See, this is why. Now you understand why we did this,”‘ Reynolds said at a press conference Wednesday.

‘What we want to say back is it doesn’t justify her death.’   

The memo did little to resolve mounting questions over whether the warrant used to enter Taylor’s apartment was valid – or whether the warrant was executed correctly.   

‘You need probable cause to get a warrant to get into a house — that doesn’t mean you’re set,’ Christopher Slobogin, director of the criminal justice program at Vanderbilt Law School, told NBC.  

‘You still need to execute a warrant properly,’ he continued. ‘You still have to knock and announce, or announce and avoid using excessive force.’