LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Louisville Branch NAACP called on Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron to resign, "for failing to conduct a fair and impartial investigation into the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor."
The organization made the announcement Friday that it had sent a resolution to both Cameron and the state's general assembly, the day prior.
The Kentucky Attorney General's Office provided the following statement from Daniel Cameron:
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.
Rauol Cunningham, president of the Louisville NAACP, said the group’s decision came out of continued conversations that have taken place over the course of many months.
“It was not the easiest decision that the organization could reach,” Cunningham said. “However, although [Cameron] is the first African American to be elected [as Kentucky attorney general], that does not exclude him from his responsibility to the entire community, nor does it exclude him from fairness and equality."
He said the resolution was drafted following the Department of Justice’s announcement of federal indictments for four former Louisville Metro Police Department officers in connection with Breonna Taylor’s death in 2020.
The charges include violating Taylor's civil rights, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction offenses.
“It caused the NAACP to look closer at [Cameron’s] findings and to conclude that they were completely inadequate,” Cunningham said.
In a media release, the NAACP said the federal indictments, “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 state investigation into Taylor’s death, led by Cameron, resulted in a grand jury indicting one LMPD officer, Brett Hankison, on three counts of first degree wanton endangerment for firing shots that went into a nearby apartment the night of Taylor's death. Hankinson was later acquitted by a jury in March 2022.
Cameron responded to the DOJ's charges on Twitter in August 2022, saying:
Today, President Biden’s Department of Justice brought federal civil rights charges against four individuals in connection with the death of Ms. Breonna Taylor. As in every prosecution, our office supports the impartial administration of justice, but it is important that people not conflate what happened today with the state law investigation undertaken by our office. Our primary task was to investigate whether the officers who executed the search warrant were criminally responsible for Ms. Taylor’s death under state law. At the conclusion of our investigation, our prosecutors submitted the information to a state grand jury, which ultimately resulted in criminal charges being brought against Mr. Brett Hankison for wanton endangerment. I’m proud of the work of our investigators & prosecutors. This case and the loss of Ms. Taylor’s life have generated national attention. People across the country have grieved, and there isn’t a person I’ve spoken to across our 120 counties that isn’t saddened by her loss. There are those, however, who want to use this moment to divide Kentuckians, misrepresent the facts of the state investigation, and broadly impugn the character of our law enforcement community. I won’t participate in that sort of rancor. It’s not productive. Instead, I’ll continue to speak with the love and respect that is consistent with our values as Kentuckians.
In 2021, Daniel Cameron was among other state leaders that had impeachment petitions filed against them, where state lawmakers decided to take no action.
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