LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A charity organization that supports the police department in Kentucky’s largest city said it was not involved in the creation of a fundraising website under the name of Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was killed by law enforcement in her home.
A webpage with the address BreonnaTaylor.com recently emerged online and directed visitors to “support good police” by sending donations for emergency responders and healthcare workers to the Louisville Metro Police Foundation, a COVID-19 fund or a Kentucky health care system, news outlets reported.
Taylor was shot eight times on March 13 by Louisville police officers who broke through her apartment door while serving a no-knock search warrant for a suspect in a drug investigation.
The executive director of the Metro Police Foundation, a private organization which raises money to support the department and local charity initiatives, told news outlets Monday that the organization’s site was temporarily taken down as officials investigated how a link to the foundation ended up on the fundraising page.
The foundation said in a tweet that it was “horrified,” adding: “We did not and would NEVER show this disrespect.”
The person who purchased the domain name was from Phoenix, Arizona, WLKY-TV reported, citing Metro Police. The president of the union representing Metro Police officers told The Courier Journal it also had nothing to do with the site.
BreonnaTaylor.com appeared to have been taken down as of Tuesday. The site had been active since at least May 16, according to an attorney representing Taylor’s family.
Taylor’s name is one of those being chanted during nationwide protests decrying police killings of black people. The unrest began after the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck for more than eight minutes as he pleaded for air. The officer has been charged with murder.
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This version corrects that the charity organization supports the police department in Louisville, Kentucky, not the state’s capital city.
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