The department who killed Breonna Taylor is back in the news — this time, for shooting two unarmed teenagers.

Louisville, KY — The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department is no stranger to violent and deadly controversy. The Free Thought Project has been reporting on their corruption and violent tendencies for years, and in 2020, the whole world learned about this department when several officers executed an innocent EMT, Breonna Taylor, as she slept in her own home.

The department is once again making national headlines — this time, for shooting two unarmed teenagers. Video of the incident, which unfolded on Feb. 20, was released over the weekend.

The officer who shot the two teens was identified as Brendan Kaiser. He has been placed on administrative leave as the department investigates the incident. If the editing and description in the video below are any indication of how the “investigation” will proceed, we can predict that this officer will get off with a slap on the wrist at most.

The officer shooting the teens took under a minute, yet the department released a 15-minute video full of justifications to control the narrative that the officer “unintentionally” shot the two boys.

As the video shows, Kaiser is responding to a simple trespassing call when he finds some children in the garage of an abandoned house. Kaiser shuts the boys in the garage and radios in for backup as he has his service weapon drawn.

“They could hear movement inside of the garage and had drawn their weapon because they did not know who was inside, how many people were inside, and whether the individuals were armed,” the department said in a news release accompanying the video.

“They just tried to get out,” Kaiser reports over his radio at one point. “We’re going to have multiple people. I just shut the garage door on them. I got them trapped in. I think they’re probably trying to get out the window.”

When the door to the garage begins to open, Kaiser has his pistol pointed at the boys and fires a single round, hitting two of them as they ran off. Kaiser was able to detain one of the teens who was not shot.

Kaiser does not report that he fired his weapon over the radio, nor does he tell the other officer when he arrives.

It is LMPD ‘s policy to release body camera footage of officer-involved shootings within 24 hours, yet the video below took 11 days.

“LMPD has been transparent from the beginning of the investigation,” the statement, provided by LMPD Public Affairs Manager Angela Ingram on behalf of the department, said. “After piecing together the evidence, the police department self-reported that an officer was involved in a shooting, despite the individuals who were shot repeatedly denying they were at the location where the shooting occurred.”

Kaiser has a history of violent and deadly behavior going back years. As the Louisville Courier-Journal reports:

Kaiser shot and killed the 42-year-old man, Isaac Jackson, after LMPD said Jackson threw a knife at another officer while inside a home on 42nd Street.

Kaiser was also suspended four days after an internal investigation found he violated policies on “de-escalation” and “courtesy” during an April 2020 incident, according to the personnel file. Specifically, Kaiser “failed to use appropriate language to attempt to calm” several people down and “failed to exercise patience and diplomacy,” according to the file, which also includes several commendation letters for his actions over the years.

Kaiser was reprimanded as well for a December 2018 incident in which he “failed to be courteous, civil and used profanity towards a juvenile,” failed to turn on his body camera and used “inappropriate force on a juvenile,” according to his personnel file, which also shows he was reprimanded in different incidents for being “at fault” in several car crashes and missing a court date.

“This officer has a history of red flag behavior,” attorney Sam Aguiar told Journal. “The department needs to explain immediately why his prior incidents didn’t prompt corrective action and training.”

Aguiar also pointed to the department’s edits to the video and how they used most of the video “putting emphasis on what the officer did consistent with his training.”

As for now, the LMPD is continuing to investigate itself and will release the results of that investigation when it is complete. Below is the video.

Article posted with permission from Matt Agorist