Justice Department will investigate police in Louisville following fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday that the Justice Department will open a civil investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department, 13 months after the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman whose killing was among the flash points that sparked mass social justice protests across the nation last summer.

Garland said the federal “pattern or practice” probe will seek to determine whether the Louisville police have engaged in a history of abusive and unlawful tactics with little accountability - marking the second time in five days he has sought to use federal power to examine a local law enforcement agency’s use of deadly force. Last week, he said the federal agency will investigate the Minneapolis Police Department, whose former officer, Derek Chauvin, was found guilty of three murder charges in the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, last May.

Garland said the Louisville investigation will seek to determine whether the department engages in unreasonable force, unconstitutional searches and seizures and unlawful executions of search warrants on private homes. It also will examine how the Louisville police tactics impact racial groups, he said.

The goal, Garland said, is to “ensure the policing policies and practices are constitutional and lawful.”

Taylor, 26, was shot and killed in Louisville in March 2020 after three plainclothes white officers forced entry to her apartment during an apparent investigation into drug dealing. Taylor’s boyfriend fired a warning shot, prompting the officers to respond with 32 shots, including six that struck Taylor.

The Louisville Police Department fired one officer - who is facing charges of three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree for firing bullets that penetrated an adjacent apartment - and the city agreed to pay Taylor’s family $12 million. None of the officers has been charged in Taylor’s death. During the mass protests that erupted after Floyd’s death, civil rights advocates often called for accountability for Taylor and numerous other Black people killed by police.

Civil rights groups applauded Garland’s announcement.

“The relationship between law enforcement and our community has been deeply fractured and shattered by the lack of trust and the little-to-no accountability enforced when police commit a crime,” NAACP National President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “For far too long, killings at the hands of police have only led to one hashtag after another. But true justice comes with accountability and action.”

Garland’s twin announcements over the past five days reflected the urgency with which the Biden administration is aiming to address abusive policing. The Trump administration sought to end such investigations - which had been used with increasing frequency in the final years of President Barack Obama’s tenure - but Garland moved quickly to restore DOJ’s ability to wield broad federal powers aimed at forcing policing reforms.

But such cases often take months to complete, experts said, and broad reforms can be slow to take hold even if DOJ pursues a court-approved negotiated settlement, known as a consent decree, with a local law enforcement agency. Vanita Gupta, who helped oversee several DOJ investigations into police agencies during the Obama administration, joined Garland’s leadership team last week as associate attorney general, the No. 3-ranking position.