Goodlett and Jaynes knew that was false, as did their sergeant, Kyle Meany, when he signed off on the request, Garland said.

“Breonna Taylor should be alive today,” Garland said.

Goodlett, Jaynes and Meany were all fired, as was a fourth officer, Brett Hankison, who faces federal charges for blindly firing into Taylor’s home through a side door and window. He was exonerated on similar state charges earlier this year. Jaynes and Meany are being tried together. That trial, along with Hankison’s, is scheduled for next year. Goodlett is expected to testify against Jaynes.

Metro Council President David James, a former police officer, said that to restore trust, Louisville’s Black community “just wants the police to treat them the same way they would treat people in another part of the city.”

No incident highlighted the racial divide more than the fatal shooting of Black restaurant owner David McAtee as police sought to enforce the city’s curfew in a predominantly African American neighborhood far from the center of the Taylor protests.

Just before midnight on May 31, 2020, Louisville officers and Kentucky National Guard members were sent to a gathering spot near McAtee’s YaYa’s BBQ “for a show of force (and) intimidation,” McAtee’s family alleges in a lawsuit.

A few nights earlier, officer Katie Crews had been photographed in a line of police as a protester offered her a handful of flowers. Crews posted the image on social media, writing that she hoped the protester was hurting from the pepper balls she “got lit up with a little later on.”

“Come back and get ya some more ole girl, I’ll be on the line again tonight,” Crews wrote.

When officers marched toward McAtee’s restaurant, Crews escalated the tension by firing non-lethal pepper balls at the crowd, an LMPD investigation found. Many people rushed into McAtee’s kitchen, where his niece was shot in the neck by Crews with the non-lethal rounds.

That prompted McAtee to pull a pistol from his hip and fire a shot. Seeing that, Crews and other officers switched to live rounds and McAtee, leaning out his kitchen door, was fatally shot in the chest by a National Guard member. The deadly force was found to be justified, but the police chief was fired by Fischer because the Louisville officers involved had failed to turn on their body cameras, just as they did during the Taylor raid.

Crews later admitted that no one in the crowd had been disorderly. She was fired by Shields in February. Now she faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of a federal charge of using unreasonable force.

James groaned while recalling McAtee’s death, saying he was saddened because he knew him and had eaten his food. The “extremely unfortunate and tragic” shooting has stuck with him as an example of bad policing, he said.

Drake said more systemic changes are needed. In the meantime, she said authorities should apologize for their treatment of protesters, and drop any cases against people arrested for demonstrating that summer. Hundreds have been cleared, but some remain criminally charged. Knowing it was all so unnecessary only deepens the pain, she said.

“We could have avoided all this,” Drake said. “And I think that’s where the pain comes from — we were right!”

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