- A Louisville Metropolitan Police Department admitted to “beating the crap out of” a drunk woman.
- The Justice Department found that the man was never disciplined for his actions.
- “Despite using clearly excessive force, the officer did not face any discipline,” a Justice Department report said.
A Louisville police officer admitted to his superiors that he once “beat the crap out of” a drunk woman while on the job, but was never disciplined for the brutal attack, the Justice Department has alleged.
The shocking incident was reported in a Justice Department investigation released Wednesday following a years-long investigation by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department.
The report states that “an intoxicated white female” was “screaming and crying” on her friend’s lawn. The police arrived at the scene and did nothing for over a minute, but finally rushed over as she was fighting with her friends.
The officer then pinned the woman to the ground with his boot and told her, “I’ve had enough of you,” the Justice Department alleged.
She tried to bite his boot to free herself, according to the report, so the officer hit “the woman’s face over and over again with his flashlight.” He later said that he did not know how many times he hit the woman.
After beating her, the officer handcuffed the woman and yelled at her to “get up.” As she sat on the sidewalk, he held her handcuffed hands behind her back and above her head before pushing her into the back of her police car, face down.
The Justice Department said the woman was left in that position, which could have led to “positional asphyxia,” the same form of death that killed George Floyd.
The Justice Department also noted that the police officer had no reason to use such excessive force since the woman weighed only 110 pounds.
The report added: “Despite using clearly excessive force, the officer did not face any discipline.”
The LMPD did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on whether the officer has since been disciplined.
DOJ’s investigation indicated that in most of the “problem incidents” reviewed, “supervisors reviewed the conduct in question but did not identify the misconduct.”
The investigation found evidence that the department’s police officers were violating the constitutional rights of citizens, detailing horrific cases of police abuse that largely went unpunished.
The investigation was first announced in April 2021, more than a year after the March 2020 death of Breonna Taylor, in which LMPD officers broke down her apartment door in the middle of the night. The officers fired into the apartment, beating and killing Taylor, after Taylor’s boyfriend shot an officer in the leg.
