Lexington Herald-Leader
By Daniel Desrochers and Rick Childress
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two officers involved in an exchange of gunfire that resulted in the death of a Louisville business owner did not activate their body cameras, a violation of Louisville Metro Police Department policy, officials announced Monday.
“That is completely unacceptable and there is no excuse for their clear failure to [follow] our policy,” said assistant chief Robert Schroeder, who is now in command after retiring Chief Steve Conrad was “relieved” of his job over the latest body camera failures.
The two officers who fired their weapons — Katie Crews and Austin Allen — during the gunfire early Monday were put on administrative leave pending the results of the shooting investigation, and Schroeder said the officers will face more discipline. Two national guard members who fired their weapons have also been pulled from duty by Gov. Andy Beshear.
The man killed was David McAtee, the owner of Yaya’s BBQ Shack restaurant, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said. McAtee didn’t fire at officers or the National Guard; he was an innocent bystander, his sister and his mother told Louisville media.
Police do not know who shot McAtee, Schroeder said.
“This type of institutional failure will not be tolerated,” Fischer said of the officers’ failure to turn on their body cameras. He called McAtee a “wonderful citizen.” McAtee was known by Louisville police for providing them with food on their shifts.
This is the second time this year that Louisville police did not activate their body cameras during an incident in which a citizen was killed and comes as tensions between police and the public have reached a breaking point.
In the other case, Breonna Taylor, a former EMT and emergency room technician, was shot eight times in her apartment by Louisville officers executing a no-knock warrant. Taylor’s death has been at the center of four days of protests in Louisville and three days of protests in Lexington.
The protesters’ calls for justice for Taylor — and the firing of the officers involved in her death — have joined a groundswell of protests against police brutality across the country after a video showed a Minneapolis police officer using his knee to apply pressure to the neck of George Floyd who died. The deaths, compounded by the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia allegedly by a white father and son; a coronavirus pandemic that has disproportionately affected black people; and America’s long history of racial inequality have caused people to spill onto the streets demanding change.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, spoke during a press conference Monday morning and demanded that the officers involved in executing the no-knock warrant be fired, similar to the officers who were fired in Minnesota after George Floyd was killed by police.
“I don’t think I’m asking for too much,” Palmer said. “Just justice for her.”
Instead of body camera video, the Louisville police department showed traffic camera footage and released audio of police radio transmissions several hours after the shooting of McAtee. The video showed police and national guard arriving at Dino’s Food Mart on 26th and Broadway, where a number of cars and people were gathered. Schroeder said officers were called in to disperse the crowd when gunfire was exchanged.
Both the traffic camera footage and the audio do not illustrate a clear picture of how McAtee was killed. However, police reported multiple shots fired from a building across the street from Dino’s. McAtee’s restaurant is near Dino’s.
The Louisville police department revealed that it did not have body camera footage to produce hours after Gov. Andy Beshear demanded the video be released so Kentuckians could see what happened.
I hope that we have answers and details today, as soon as possible, about what happened,” Beshear said earlier Monday. “Good, bad or ugly, I think people deserve to know, and I trust the people of Louisville and the people of Kentucky — if we’re honest with them — that they would be able to process it in the right way.”
Beshear said it was “unacceptable” that the police officers either did not have, or did not activate, their body cameras and called for LMPD to find body camera footage from the other officers at the scene.
“It’s very significant; I want to see the discipline that is handed out,” Beshear said. “After everything that’s happened. This can’t happen. It shouldn’t.”
Louisville police officers cannot be fired while an investigation is pending. The FBI is investigating Taylor’s death and U.S. Attorney Russell Coleman said Monday that they will investigate Monday’s shooting.
Fischer said he is aware he is “asking people to trust a process that they don’t trust. The roots of that mistrust are in the history of our country.”
At one of his press conferences, Beshear stopped short of calling for the arrest of officers, saying he supported independent investigations into what happened to Taylor. In the shooting of McAtee, Beshear said he has authorized the Kentucky State Police to investigate and said he expects them to conduct the investigation quickly.
Beshear said he called in the National Guard on Saturday and Sunday because he had heard “outside agitators” were looking to capitalize on the protests to create violence.
He said the National Guard members were carrying unloaded weapons and that they were only loaded after the National Guard and LMPD were fired upon.
He said “there is no question” that shots were fired at LMPD and the National Guard.
Several people of interest were being interviewed by police in connection to the shooting of David McAtee, police said.
Conrad told the Courier-Journal that it is “unclear if the person who was shot was the person who also fired at the officers.”
The names of the National Guard members were not released. But the two officers who fired weapons were Crews, who has been with the Louisville department since August 2018, and Allen, who joined the Louisville department in 2016, according to their department personnel files. Allen has received numerous commendations in 2018 and 2019 for arrests, for apprehending suspects without injury and for providing medical care for suspects who were injured. For instance, one suspect was caught in a vehicle that caught fire after crashing. Allen and another officer pulled the suspect free.
McAtee’s death is likely only to exacerbate the existing tension between Louisville residents and police heading into a fifth day of protests. On Monday morning, a crowd gathered at the site of McAtee’s death, where they openly grieved and demanded accountability from Louisville police, according to Louisville media. Fischer has extended the city’s “dusk to dawn” curfew through June 8.
With emotions running high across the country, Beshear denounced the inequalities that have led up to the moment. In the midst of a global pandemic that has disproportionately killed black Kentuckians, Beshear said the state needs to address inequalities in healthcare and in the criminal justice system.
“This is not the first time that people have given voice to frustration about lack of true progress,” said Beshear, who was formerly the chief law enforcement officer in the state.
When asked about what he will do to bring about the changes protesters have asked for, Beshear, said that he would meet with leaders in the black community to talk about how to address healthcare inequity and that he will require training on implicit bias for law enforcement officers.
“There is a lot that we need to do and I don’t have all those answers,” Beshear said. “But my commitment is to do everything that I can.”
(c)2020 the Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.)