LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Louisville detective who obtained the search warrant bringing police to Breonna Taylor’s door the night she died wrote that he personally verified that a suspected drug dealer was getting packages at her apartment.
Except, that wasn’t true.
Detective Joshua Jaynes swore in a March 12 affidavit that he verified the packages with a postal inspector.
But Jaynes admitted something different on May 19 while being questioned by LMPD investigators looking into Taylor’s fatal police shooting during a March 13 search of her apartment.
Jaynes said he actually had asked another officer, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, to verify with postal inspectors that Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend and the target of a narcotics investigation, was getting packages at her home. And Mattingly had been told indirectly she wasn’t.
“I could have worded a little bit differently in there,” Jaynes told investigators about the affidavit he submitted declaring that he himself had verified the package information postal inspectors.
“It was just, uh, in my opinion, that when I reach out to (Mattingly), the end-all-be-all was gonna be from a U.S. postal inspector office or the post office.”
The day after Jaynes gave his interview, Sgt. Jeremy Ruoff with the department’s Public Integrity Unit filled out a form requesting to obtain records from Jaynes’ computer. Jaynes has been on administrative reassignment since June.
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Public Integrity Unit investigators in their July 2 summary wrote that “wording on the affidavit is misleading” and “given Jaynes’ statement related to the information, should be reviewed for criminal actions.”
The interview and PIU summary is part of the massive investigative file in the Taylor case released Wednesday by Mayor Greg Fischer.
Circuit Judge Mary Shaw, who signed Taylor’s search warrant, said last week she was concerned that Jaynes had lied to obtain it after reports surfaced indicating LMPD officers had been told no questionable packages had been delivered to Taylor’s apartment.
The discrepancies are believed to be part of the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Taylor’s death. Attorney General Daniel Cameron chose not to make the warrant process part of his case, saying he was deferring to the FBI.
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An FBI spokesman said it is has obtained the Public Integrity Unit file and is “actively investigating all aspects” of Taylor’s death.
No one has been charged in Taylor’s death after Cameron’s office decided that the two officers who shot her, Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were acting in self-defense when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them first.
John Dolan, the attorney who represented Jaynes during his PIU interview, did not respond to an email sent Wednesday afternoon or a message left with his law office.
The debate over delivered packages
Jaynes said in his May 19 interview with police investigators, one of dozens of documents in LMPD’s investigation released publicly Wednesday, that he had asked Mattingly in January to check if Taylor’s former boyfriend, Glover, was receiving “any dope” or “suspicious” packages.
Glover was a main target in a narcotics investigation centered on Elliot Avenue, about 10 miles from Taylor’s apartment. Glover had been previously convicted of drug trafficking in Mississippi, and police had been watching him, noting that he had picked up a package at her apartment.
Glover, who was arrested in a different drug raid the same night Taylor was killed, has denied Taylor had anything to do with the drug trade.
No cash or drugs were found at Taylor home after the shooting.
Before those search warrants were carried out, Jaynes and Mattingly discussed whether Glover was having drugs and money shipped to Taylor’s…
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