A Kentucky police sergeant has been eviscerated over a tone-deaf interview he gave seven months after the shooting of black EMT Breonna Taylor in her home, in which he suggests the cops actually weren’t forceful enough.
Louisville Police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who was shot in the leg by Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker as he broke into the couple’s apartment with six other officers on a no-knock warrant on March 13 around 1am, argued the cops actually gave the pair too much time to respond in a Wednesday interview on ‘Good Morning America’.
“What would I have done differently, the answer to that is simple now that I’ve been thinking about it,” Mattingly mused on the ABC program. “We would have either served the no-knock warrant or we would have done the normal thing we do, which is five to 10 seconds. To not give people time to formulate a plan,” he explained, suggesting that Walker had only shot him in the leg because he had had time to work out a logical response to self-identified police officers banging on the couple’s door.
If that had happened…Breonna Taylor would be alive, 100 percent…Breonna Taylor is now attached to me for the rest of my life.
The cop insisted they knocked six times, repeatedly identifying themselves as police, and were only then confronted by Walker’s gun. While Walker was initially charged with attempted murder of a police officer, the charges were dropped amid the outcry over Taylor’s killing.
Mattingly’s narrative diverges wildly from witnesses’ accounts of the incident. Twelve people, including Walker and the couple’s neighbors, countered that the intruders never revealed they were police – which led Walker to fire his gun at what he thought were home invaders.
Worse, the target of the raid – Taylor’s ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover – was already in custody when she was shot, and no drugs or any evidence of drug trafficking were found in the raid. In a rare acknowledgement of culpability, Louisville banned no-knock warrants amid the outcry that followed the shooting.
Mattingly tore into Louisville politicians and even police leadership for not correcting the “false narratives” surrounding Taylor’s death in the four-hour interview, denying the case was “relatable to [Minneapolis police choking victim] George Floyd” or Georgia ex-police shooting victim Ahmaud Arbery. “It’s not a race thing like people wanna try to make it be. It’s not.”
The cop’s interview aired the day after a grand juror in the case against the three officers responsible for Taylor’s death revealed the jury was not actually allowed to consider homicide charges in the case. Instead, the Kentucky Attorney General only presented them with the endangerment charge, and that was against just one officer.
Public outcry across the US, including riots in Louisville, followed the jury’s decision to charge just Mattingly’s colleague Brett Hankison with “wanton endangerment” for shooting into a neighbor’s apartment, with many believing all three cops should have been charged with her murder. A total of 32 shots were fired into Taylor’s apartment, six of which hit Taylor who died in the hallway of her building.
Mattingly acknowledged “she didn’t deserve to die,” noting “she didn’t do anything to deserve a death sentence,” but insisted it was not the police who were to blame. He complained he and his family regularly receive death threats and lamented that after 20 years of service to the Louisville Police Department, they have not stood by him.
Taylor has since become a symbol of police misconduct for the Black Lives Matter movement, her name often chanted along with the likes of Floyd, Arbery, New York police choking victim Eric Garner, and Baltimore police “rough ride” victim Freddie Gray.
That movement was not pleased to see Mattingly trotted out on GMA as if he was the real victim of the shooting.
Better headline:”‘Breonna Taylor is now attached to me for the rest of my life,’ says man who murdered Breonna Taylor”Jonathan Mattingly should be in jail, not on TV. #JusticeforBreonnaTaylor#SayHerName#BreonnaTaylor#BlackLivesMatterhttps://t.co/DpFvEU982i
pic.twitter.com/llwz8kDufVI Don’t Understand Why #ABCNews is Giving the Killer Cop Jonathan Mattingly a Platform on How he Killed #BreonnaTaylor and Still hasn’t been held Accountable on Violated his Duty as First Responder Period. #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor#GMA
Many on social media were baffled that he was being “given a platform” at all.
Breonna Taylor was a victim not you, Jonathan Mattingly. That interview was disgusting.
The smugness of Officer Jonathan Mattingly on @GMA talking about why cops “were justified in killing Breonna Taylor” is appalling. The fact that he’ll face no punishment at all for his part in taking Breonna’s life is wrong and unjust. #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
