Louisville’s branch of the NAACP is seeking for Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron to resign, stating Cameron failed to conduct a fair investigation into the the shooting death of Breonna Taylor.
via: BET
If he declines to step down, the civil rights organization will urge state legislators to impeach him. Under Cameron’s investigation, which the civil rights organization said favored the police, no one was charged with a crime. But a federal probe had a different result.
“The recent federal indictments of four Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the Breonna Taylor killing has highlighted, demonstrated, and proven the insufficiency of the state investigation led by the Attorney General of the Commonwealth and an absence of an understanding of the Commonwealth’s criminal laws,” the NAACP stated.
On March 13, 2020, LMPD officers forced themselves into Taylor’s apartment during a botched raid, killing the 26-year-old African American woman who worked as an emergency room technician. Her death sparked outrage across the country.
According to the civil rights group, Cameron sided with the police officers instead of impartially weighing the evidence. Speaking in August to a crowd at an annual political picnic in Western Kentucky, Cameron said he will “always have (law enforcement’s) back and we will always support the blue,” the Courier Journal reported.
“I’m proud of the work I’ve done on behalf of every Kentuckian, and I am honored to serve the citizens of the Commonwealth as Kentucky’s 51st Attorney General, Cameron, a Black Republican running for governor in 2023, said in a statement, according to the newspaper.
On Aug. 4, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that four current and former LMPD officers have been federally charged in Taylor’s death. Weeks later, former police Detective Kelly Hannah Goodlett pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate Taylor’s civil rights by assisting to falsify an affidavit for the home search. In addition, Joshua Jaynes, another ex-detective, was fired after it was alleged he, along with Goodlett, lied on the search warrant used when police forced themselves into Taylor’s apartment, shooting Taylor while she slept in bed.
This isn’t the first attempt to remove Cameron from office. WDRB reported that three grand jurors in the state’s case filed a petition in January 2021 to impeach Cameron, accusing him of committing “misdemeanors in office” that include lying to them about the Taylor investigation.
But according to the Courier Journal, the Kentucky General Assembly, which is currently heavily Republican, rarely impeaches constitutional officers.
