The Federal Court in the United States sentenced the former police officer Brett Hankison to 33 months in prison for the “excessive use of force” under the raid to the African American apartment Breonna Taylor in 2020 in Kentucky, where she died from police bullets.
According to CNN, the judge of the US District Court Grady Jennings found Hankison to guilty that he “blindly opened fire” 10 times in Taylor’s apartment, and rejected the request of the Ministry of Justice to not appoint a prison term.
The judge also decided that Hankison will be under supervision for 3 years after serving the sentence. He added that the former policeman will not go to prison immediately – the date and place of the start of the conclusion will be determined by the bureau of the US prisons.
Judge Jennings called the document submitted by the Ministry of Justice, which proposed not to appoint a imprisonment, “inappropriate and inappropriate” and criticized the Ministry of Justice for regarding Hankison’s actions as a “slight offense.”
Thus, Brett Hankison became the first policeman to receive a prison term in the case of Breonna Taylor – one of the most resonant incidents of police violence in the United States, which caused mass protests.
– What happened?
26-year-old African American Breonna Taylor, an employee of the emergency medical care service, died on March 13, 2020 in Louisville, Kentukki, during a police raid on suspicion of drug trafficking. She was shot in her bedroom.
The incident caused a wave of protests throughout the country against the backdrop of discussions of racial discrimination and abuse of the police.
Hankison was fired in June 2020 for “reckless shooting” at the Taylor apartment. In September 2020, the large collegium of the jury of Kentukka accused him only of a threat to the life of neighbors, as he shot at an adjacent apartment. Accusations against the other two officers were removed.
August 4, 2022, the federal authorities repeatedly opened a case against four police officers – Brett Hankison, Kelly Goodlett, Joshua Jaines and Kyle Mini – on accusations of abuse, distorting information in a search warrant and trying to hide the truth.