WASHINGTON, Nov 2 — A former Kentucky police officer was convicted in federal court yesterday of a civil rights abuse in the killing of Breonna Taylor, whose death sparked police reform and racial justice protests across the United States in 2020.

Brett Hankison was convicted on one count of civil rights abuse, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Though Hankinson’s shots did not hit Taylor, a Black woman who died during a police raid on her home, he fired blindly through a bedroom window that had a curtain and blinds drawn.

Hankison is the first officer to be convicted of the four police federally charged over Taylor’s 2020 death. Two other officers remain charged with falsifying a search warrant affidavit and another pleaded guilty to charges around the search warrant.

However no one was ever charged for killing Taylor.

The deaths of Taylor, 26, and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.

"The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend the civil rights of every person in this country to be free from unlawful police violence,” assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke said in the Justice Department statement.

Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020 when they heard a noise at the door.

Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding one police officer.

Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.

Hankison argued he fired his gun to protect his fellow officers.

It was the second time Hankison appeared in federal court: his first trial ended in a mistrial.

Also on Friday, the jury found Hankison not guilty of violating Taylor’s neighbors’ rights, for firing through a sliding glass door, also with its blinds and curtain drawn.

Hankison will be sentenced in March next year, the Justice Department said. — AFP