By Lauren Burke, NNPA
Harmeet Dhillon, President Trump’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, has asked a judge who will be sentencing a former Louisville, Kentucky Metro Police Department Officer who was a part of the wrongful shooting death of Breonna Taylor, to impose only a one-day sentence as punishment. Taylor, 26, was shot dead during a “no knock” warrant search conducted by seven Louisville police officers who entered her apartment. They killed Taylor as part of a raid in search of a drug dealer. The March 13, 2020, killing of Taylor would go down as one of the most memorable and often mentioned incidents referenced by the Black Lives Matter movement.
The police mistakenly killed Taylor, who was unarmed, in a barrage of gunfire and left many to question the details of police policy in Louisville. The young Taylor worked as a non-call emergency room technician and a first responder in the local Louisville area at the time she was killed by the police. In 2024, a federal jury in Kentucky convicted Brett Hankison of violating Taylor’s civil rights. Hankison fired several shots through the window of Taylor’s apartment, on July 16, 2025, sentencing memorandum by Assistant Attorney General Dhillon and senior counsel Robert Keenan stated that Hankison did not shoot anyone during the raid on Taylor’s home and had a clean record before the incident.
Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, who was appointed by President Trump in April 2018, is to consider the sentence of former police officer Brett Hankison on Monday, July 21. The Trump Justice Department is now pushing for time served in addition to one day in prison, along with three years of supervised release. The Trump Administration continues to focus on reversing many decisions made during the Biden Administration, particularly around questions of race, police brutality, and justice reform. The police killings of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis Police Officer on May 25, 2020, and Breonna Taylor are connected to the activism behind the Black Lives Matter movement. If Hankison serves only one day, the time served moment will represent the continuance of a familiar trend that features white or Latino cops who served no punishment after the wrongful death of Black individuals they either killed or had a hand in killing.
Trump has pardoned several police officers involved in the killing of individuals in only six months. Examples include Trump granting clemency to District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department Officer Terence Sutton, who was sentenced to five years, and Andrew Zabavsky, a DC Metropolitan Police Lieutenant who was sentenced to four years. In other police brutality-related deaths of Black individuals, such as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Philando Castile, no officer involved served any time in jail. Taylor’s family would later be awarded $12 million in compensation for her wrongful death on September 15, 2020.
