Police apologize for firing projectiles at news crew

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A police officer was seen on camera firing what appeared to be pepper balls at a news crew during a live television broadcast of the second night of Louisville protests, prompting an apology from the Louisville Metro Police Department.

A crew from WAVETV was downtown in the Kentucky city Friday night, covering demonstrations over the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed by police in her own home in March. Police presence intensified around 9:45 p.m., as officers in riot gear stood shoulder to shoulder moving people down a key street near City Hall, the Courier Journal reported. As WAVETV was on air, reporter Kaitlin Rust is heard yelling offcamera: “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!” Video shows a police officer aiming directly at the camera crew, as Rust describes the projectiles as “pepper bullets.”

“I want to apologize,” Louisville police spokeswoman Jessie Halladay told the Courier Journal. “It’s not something that should have occurred if she was singled out as a reporter.”

Halladay said she couldn’t tell who the officer was at this time, but that police would review the video again and “if we need to do any investigation for discipline, we will do that.”

The video shows Rust and the camera crew moving away as indignant instudio anchors ask whether they’re OK and what is happening. Rust tells them they’re OK, and that the crew was behind the line, but police wanted them to move farther away.

“Well I’m sure if they would have just said, ‘Move,’ you would have done so,” an anchor is heard telling Rust.

A clip of the WAVETV broadcast posted to Twitter amassed more than 8 million views in less than six hours, and was retweeted more than 50,000 times, including by other journalists and rapper IceT.

Louisville’s protests followed the release of a 911 call Taylor’s boyfriend made March 13, moments after the 26yearold EMT was shot eight times by narcotics detectives who knocked down her front door. No drugs were found in her home. Taylor’s death has captured national headlines alongside the killings of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia in February and George Floyd, the black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes as he pleaded for air.