Police major who oversaw raid unit investigated

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Louisville Police major who oversaw the unit that sent officers to Breonna Taylor’s home the night she was fatally shot is the subject of an internal police investigation.

The department’s Professional Standards Unit opened an investigation this week into Maj. Kimberly Burbrink, the commander of the Criminal Interdiction Division, the Courier Journal reported. Burbrink has been placed on administrative reassignment.

The department declined to answer questions about the probe of Burbrink, which was initiated at the request of acting Chief Yvette Gentry.

The newspaper reported that the department’s investigative file released this month included a report accusing Burbrink of “pressuring” and “crossexamining” investigators who were probing the shooting.

Burbrink was allowed to attend a May video call to update department leaders about the Taylor case, even though investigators “voiced concern” about her presence on the call.

The report said when investigators pointed out “inconsistencies” in Brett Hankison’s statement to investigators after the Taylor shooting, Burbrink “took opposition with investigators and requested investigators to list the inconsistencies.“

Hankison, a former Louisville police detective, was fired in June and faces three counts of wanton endangerment for shooting into Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment the night of the narcotics raid. Taylor, a 26yearold emergency medical worker, was fatally shot five times March 13 by Louisville officers carrying a narcotics warrant based on the suspicion that an exboyfriend might have used her apartment to stash drugs or cash. None were found in her home and the officers have not been charged in her death.

But after details of her death were made public, calls for justice helped propel protests over racism and police violence against Black people in the United States.

Gentry, who took office earlier this month, has said she wants the department’s internal probe of the Taylor shooting to include “everything from the beginning, as it relates to the investigation and the warrant itself, through the supervision of it.”

“I think that’s the best way to do it, to tell the story of what happened in this case and what we have learned from it and what we’re going to do going forward,” Gentry said.