The same Kentucky judge who signed off on the Breonna Taylor warrant, leading to the shooting death of the innocent woman at the hands of Louisville police, signed off on another warrant without probable cause that could have led to the shooting deaths of more innocent people.
Instead, the man, woman and child they raided and handcuffed – who were doing nothing but painting the home for new tenants – will receive a $180,000 settlement, according to WDRB.
In fact, the man police were hoping to find at the home that day, despite scant evidence that he even lived there, had already been arrested on drug charges at the time of the raid.
However, according to two scathing reports, including from the United States Department of Justice, that type of incompetency and lack of oversight are more the rule than the exception at the Louisville Metro Police Department.
“We have reasonable cause to believe that LMPD engages in a pattern or practice of seeking search warrants in ways that deprive individuals of their rights under the Fourth Amendment,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice report issued on March 8, 2023.
“A significant number of LMPD’s search warrant applications fail to satisfy the constitutional requirement of being supported by ‘probable cause.’”
The second report, titled the Heintze Report, described a “culture of acceptance” at the department from judges and supervisors in approving no-knock search warrants.
The no-knock raid in question took place on July 15, 2019, eight months before the no-knock raid on Taylor’s home that led to her shooting death.
Circuit Court Judge Mary Shaw signed off on both warrants and probably many more during her 18-year career as a judge, which ended in January 2023 after she lost her re-election the previous November.
The Warrant
Louisville Metro police officer Wesley Troutman had spent five months investigating an alleged drug dealer named Joshua Kirk when he asked Judge Shaw to sign the warrant, according to court records.
Troutman listed 13 controlled purchases of drugs to support the warrant, including two occasions at the house they ended up raiding, even though there is only one instance of him even entering the home for a few minutes.
The lawsuit states that police raided the same home on July 5, 2019, 10 days before the raid in question, which led to all the occupants in the house moving out.
Days later, Roy Stucker was hired to paint the home along with his girlfriend, Courtney Brown-Porter, and her 10-year-old daughter.
In the early hours of July 15, 2019, when police were planning on serving the search warrant, Troutman arrested Kirk at another location and took him to jail. But rather than try to call the raid off, he simply did not participate in it.
The Raid
At least 10 police officers arrived at the house in two armored vehicles and at least one ATV and approached the house and yelled “Police with a warrant” seconds before they started shattering windows.
“Please this is a job, we don’t live here,” Brown-Porter pleaded with them.
“You’re really going to put handcuffs on my daughter?”
The cops separated all three individuals as they searched the home, finding nothing illegal. The three remained handcuffed for 20 minutes.
The couple filed a lawsuit, which was dismissed at the district level on the basis that the cops had enough probable cause to conduct the raid. However, an appellate court overturned the dismissal after realizing the degree of search warrants being handed out with little probable cause.
“They (police) treated us horrible, I mean, worse than if we was what he was looking for, talking bad about us, cussed her out for getting upset,” Stucker told WDRB.
