The Louisville, Kentucky, metro council voted 26-0 to pass an ordinance called “Breonna’s Law”, banning no-knock search warrants in response to the wrongful death of Breonna Taylor.
According to CNN, the council voted 26-0 in favor of the ordinance. The ordinance regulates how search warrants are carried out and mandates the use of body cameras during searches.
The ordinance also requires all Louisville Metro Police Department officers to be equipped with an operating body camera while carrying out a search.
The cameras have to be activated no later than five minutes prior to all searches and remain on for five minutes after. All recorded data also has to be retained for five years following an executing action.
In a statement Tamika Palmer, Breonna Taylor’s mom told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that her daughter “would have been amazed to see the world changing.”
Taylor, who was an EMT, “was saving lives while she was living,” Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, told Cooper Thursday.
“Now with the passage of the Breonna Taylor Law, she will be saving lives forever.”
26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville Metro Police Department on March 13, 2020, when three officers executing under a no-knock warrant entered her apartment. They fired 20 shots, eight of which hit Taylor. Gunfire was exchanged between Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker and the officers. Walker said he believed that the officers were intruders. Another factor that makes Taylor’s death egregious is that the LMPD investigation was searching for two people who were already in police custody.
At this time the officers who killed Taylor are still free.