A federal judge has ruled that Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend was responsible for the beloved EMT’s death.

From the case, the judge also dismissed major felony charges against two former Louisville officers accused of falsifying a warrant that led police to Breonna Taylor’s door before they fatally shot her.

Judge rules Breonna Taylor’s death was not from warrant

U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson’s ruling declared that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who fired a shot at police the night of the raid, were the legal cause of her death, not a warrant.

Charges dismissed

Federal charges against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany were filed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022. Garland accused Jaynes and Meany, who were not present at the botched raid, of knowing they had falsified part of the warrant and put Taylor in a precarious situation by sending armed officers to her apartment.

But Simpson wrote in the Aug 27 Tuesday ruling that “there is no direct link between the warrantless entry and Taylor’s death.” Simpson’s ruling effectively reduced the civil rights violation charges against Jaynes and Meany, which had carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, to misdemeanors.

The judge did not dismiss the conspiracy charge against Jaynes and another charge against Meany, who is accused of making false statements to investigators.

Botched raid

When police executed a drug warrant and broke down Taylor’s door in March 2020, Walker fired a shot that struck an officer in the leg. Walker said he believed an intruder was bursting in. Officers returned fire, striking and killing 26-year-old Taylor in her hallway.

Simpson resolved that Walker’s “conduct became the proximate, or legal, cause of Taylor’s death.”

“While the indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meany set off a series of events that ended in Taylor’s death, it also alleges that (Walker) disrupted those events when he decided to open fire” on the police, Simpson wrote.

Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend lawsuit

Walker was initially arrested and charged with attempted murder of a police officer.

The charge was later dismissed after his attorneys successfully argued Walker didn’t know he was firing at police.

He later filed a federal lawsuit against the city and police and received a $2 million settlement.

CBS reports a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to the news outlet that the department is reviewing the judge’s decision and assessing next steps.

The family of four Black girls who were wrongfully detained and held at gunpoint by Aurora, CO police have reached a settlement with the city.

Family of Black girls held at gunpoint reach settlement

Finalized on Monday, the families will collectively receive $1.9 million.

The settlement marks the latest payout the City of Aurora has been forced to make over officers’ excessive use of force.

In 2021, the city paid a $15 million settlement to Elijah McClain’s family, a 23-year-old Black man who died in 2019 after officers put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine.

The incident

In August 2020, four Black girls, ages 6, 12, 14 and 17, were held face down on the ground and put in handcuffs in a nail salon parking lot, crying and screaming, as officers towered over them.

Brittney Gilliam, the mother of the 6-year-old, was driving that Sunday morning with her relatives, because they were going to get their nails done together.

Wrongfully detained

But before they made it in the salon, Gilliam was detained after officers mistakenly thought she was driving a stolen S.U.V.

Police had mistakenly believed Gilliam was driving a stolen car.

And a simple second step police failed to take, resulted in the family being wrongfully detained.

Officers didn’t type in the plate number in a second database to show them the make of the vehicle. If they had, authorities said, the officers would have realized that the plate number was registered to a motorcycle in Montana.

Black girls and mother held at gunpoint traumatized

Dozens of bystanders watched the ordeal unfold, and video footage of the incident went viral, sparking protests over racial injustice, citing excessive force on Black Americans.

After the video went viral, Aurora police had apologized for their grave mistake, but the emotional trauma had already happened.

The Aurora Police Department said its officers are trained to draw their weapons before telling passengers to exit the vehicle and ordering them to lie on the ground, The Post reported.

Officers who held Black girls at gunpoint

One of the two officers who drew their guns and handcuffed members of the family was initially suspended.

However, he and the other officer that pulled his firearm remain on the police force, the New York Times reports.

To date, no officers were fired or charged in connection with the incident.

The number of people killed by police in the United States reached a new high in 2023, according to new research.

2023 police killings increased dramatically

Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, dockets deaths at the hands of police officers. Last year, it recorded the highest number of killings since its national tracking began in 2013.

Statistics explained

The data reported that police officers killed 1,329 people in 2023, representing nearly a 19-percent increase over the 11-year span.

Nearly 90% of those killed were fatally shot, according to Abdul Nasser Rad, managing director of research and data at Campaign Zero, who runs Mapping Police Violence.

There were only 14 days without a police killing last year and on average, law enforcement officers killed someone every 6.6 hours, according to the report.

Meanwhile last year, the number of people killed by gunfire and officers killed in the line of duty declined, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. There was an increase in the number of police officers shot.

The newly released data suggests a grim reality and a systemic crisis, with an average of about three people killed by officers each day, with slight increases in recent years. In 2022, 1,250 were killed by police.

The data also reported that Black people were about 2.8 times more likely to be killed by officers than their white counterparts between 2013 and 2023.

Recording police misconduct

For decades, many Americans have suffered various forms of brutality and injustice at the hands of “bad” law enforcement officers.

When a civilian puts in a complaint against the officer only a small percent of complaints result in the officer being disciplined —partly because the accusations are hidden.

Half of the battle is knowing who the “bad” law enforcement are and proper action being taken.

Missin Peace, a national police misconduct database that collects formal civilian complaints against law enforcement, helps fill that void.

In 2022, we had a conversation with the creators, who urged those who filed a complaint against an officer, to upload it on their website as well.

While there is still much work to do, it’s a start.