So. Much. Trauma.
Six months of protests and marches and still there’s no justice for Breonna Taylor. They need to stop running those headlines saying a grand jury indicted a former police officer on first-degree wanton endangerment charges in Breonna’s murder. Nobody was charged for Breonna’s murder. That charge doesn’t have anything to do with Breonna, it has to do with the fact that as he blindly shot into Breonna’s apartment his bullets went into the neighbor’s apartment.
Let that sit for a minute. He’s being charged for wantonly endangering the neighbor, but not for the fact that those same bullets wantonly endangered Breonna Taylor’s life.
The family was awarded a large settlement this month in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city. That settlement comes without an admission of wrongdoing, mind you, and it’s a $12 million dollar police brutality price tag the taxpayers will bear. It’s payment, but it’s not justice.
So here we are again, people protesting in the streets as a combat ready police presence closes in around them. You can’t get justice for a woman shot to death in her own bed but by God we’ll detain and arrest you for daring to shout about injustice in our streets. The brutalities served up to Black and Brown people every single day know no end. It is the bottomless shame of America.
Riddle from the Middle 
P.S. The no knock warrant was actually designed to preserve life. For example, when attempting to take into custody a suspect or suspects known to be dangerous and armed….gang members, gun runners, drug cartel, terrorists, a mass shooting suspect, any violent criminal known to have guns etc. Why? It allows the officers to enter premises by suprise, catching them and securing the suspect without a gunfight that may result in casualties, minimizing risk to themselves, suspects and bystanders. Knocking on the door of suspects prone to violence and known to have guns only gives them the warning they need to take up arms which creates a dangerous situation for everyone.
In this case, the officers knocked (kind of takes the wind right out of the narrative that “no knock” warrants should be banned huh?
They in fact did not feel she was a danger. Her boyfriend was the unforeseen threat and that threat cost her her life.
The only thing the officers were liable for is this…they should not have knocked. Had they entered without that warning, boyfriend would not have had the warning to arm himself and she simply would have been arrested.
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I’m just curious about this. What do you think would or should’ve happened in that scenario? I mean, from the shoes of officers. I know we dont particularly like to see situations from those shoes, heck, that uniform generally obscures the fact that an actual human being is behind it but for equities sake, let’s give it a go and see how the perspective may or may not change….
Simple facts….
Award monies with no admission of guilt. O J was acquitted in criminal court yet found liable in a civil and ordered to pay up.
Lady in question was listed on the warrant as 100’s of text messages showed she was activity involved in the illegal activinty.
While it was a no knock warrant (all legal), the officers indeed did knock and identify themselves as reported by nieghbors and witnesses.
Upon entering, her boyfriend opened fire on police.
I’m having difficulty in figuring out any other scenario of how this could’ve gone. In the shoes of officers entering that door with other officers directly behind and aside you, someone shooting at you, hitting you and possibly the men behind you….to what? Stand there and just take those bullets? Let your life go and your fellow officers too? From the shoes of her boyfriend, do I expect to shoot at police officers…heck, anyone, especially someone with a gun and expect them no to fight back, fight for their lives and those around them?
She was a casualty of the circumstances of the decision of another and the unanticipated event that rendered a split second response to it.
Who is responsible for her death after viewing it from different vantage points? For me it comes down to this…..the actions of 1 single person, her boyfriend. While he decided for himself to initiate a fight where he could do damage but could not win, deciding it was better to maybe kill a couple cops and certainly himself than to go to what? Bail her out of jail then have her day in court? AND, made that decision for her as well.
No matter how I turn this over in my mind, it comes down to 1 person, him and she herself as a contributor. Had she not been engaged in illegal activity, there never would have been a warrant to begin with. However, she deserved to be able to have had the choice to go to court not the grave.
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I’ll keep my response to this portion of your comment. There are some factual errors in your presentation that make it difficult for me to come to the same conclusion.
Police request a no-knock warrant for Taylor’s home based on their belief that her ex-boyfriend was using her address to mail drugs, not because she was criminally suspect.
The reasoning behind entering unannounced would be sound if the alleged drug dealer in question actually lived at the address.
There are conflicting reports on whether the police did or did not announce themselves. Initial reports state they knocked but no witnesses reported hearing “police”. One witness recently changed their story on this. Since there is no body cam footage it’s impossible to verify which version is true.
Taylor’s boyfriend, a licensed gun owner with no criminal record, fired a shot at someone who’d broken through their door after midnight. They are *in their own home* and have the right to defend themselves against intruders. He thought it was a home invasion.
No, I don’t expect officers to stand there and get shot. Taylor’s boyfriend shot one bullet at the intruders. Officers who are supposed to be trained for this shoot TWENTY-FIVE bullets in return. Even without body cam footage this is excessive force. If they’d shown even partial restraint Breonna may not be dead.
There is NO evidence that Breonna Taylor was engaged in illegal activity. This is a smear campaign against an EMT who was murdered while sleeping peacefully in her own bed. All illegal or suspicious activity is connected to Glover, the ex-boyfriend, and does not implicate Taylor.
It only comes down to “1 person” if you refuse to see all the missteps leading up to the police crashing through that door then unloading a barrage of bullets.
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It’s all so confusing with just a mad jumble of conflicting facts and accusations. There is really only 1 simple truth we can all embrace and that’s that it is heartbreaking. I hope it is resolved justly. And, I hope it will result in better future practices.
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Absolutely. We need more transparency — body cams give police backup for when there’s no witness to say they followed procedure. I wish we had that here because all accounts of that night sound like it was very chaotic.
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I totally agree! We need greater funding not defunding. Theres no equity across the board. Example:
In Ft Worth, in order to join the police force you have to have a college degree, apply, be accepted, spend months in the academy training, graduate from that then spend a year as a rookie. You also have to have good credit and maintain good credit.
In Blytheville arkansas – you apply, get the job and can run around with a badge and gun for a YEAR before ever going to the academy for any training!
All the police shows where they use fingerprints, dna to solve violent crimes are only from highly funded areas where they have those resources. Other areas can’t even take fingerprints because they dont have the funding to use those resources.
Some areas make pretty good income but in many areas , cops only make about $15 an hour. I’m not sure you can get quality applicants at that rate.
They need the resources for psychological testing and support. It is not an easy job to spend every day all day dealing with the worst of society and think they’ll come out unchanged. Theres a reason why divorce rate for male officers is 98%, 100% for female officers….why the high alcoholism and suicide rates among officers.
We have another more insipid problem though….media, it doesnt matter who we are black, white, cops nor the situation. We do get to celebrate the hero’s, the best of us, the great things we do…theres no money in that so they saturate us with the worst of us, worst incidents and make that our office spokes people, dont they? They show young black rioters but not all exact same white ones. They give air time to the ranters not the huggers. They play George Floyd but not the white kid months before in Dallas who died exactly the same way. They’re tearing us apart.
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How can it be that a group tasked with defending the populace and keeping the ‘peace’ sees no crime in shooting a woman in her own bed in the middle of the night ? What self induced blindness! Wake up ! Say her name…
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We were talking about this just last night at dinner. You can’t claim to “protect and serve” when you neither protect every segment of society nor serve our wish for justice. They see the crime, they just choose not to convict one another of it. Shameful.
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They have taken an oath to protect and serve the public. Not just some of the public. All of the public. The judge that wrote the no knock warrant, the prosecutor or public official that requested the warrant, and the entire police chain of command that executed the warrant. No something Kentucky or the US government should let slide. Her civil rights were violated by the government. There is no excuse. There is no side stepping this.
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100% this.
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I was happily unaware. It’s not that it’s not an important story, it’s that it is part of an overall attitude and the names and faces of the victims (not because they’re black) are getting mushed together in a sort of vile collage. The STORIES blend. At least the family got monetary compensation. Which, agreed, is not justice but probably as close to it as that family is going to get. Justice is dead in America for people of any color. And as long as color remains a factor America (if not the world) is going to remain a version of Hell. In my opinion.
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I think that’s why I keep saying their names because as rampant as this problem is it’s easy to let the stories blend together. I’m guilty of that because I can’t seem to keep the details straight for the last two decades of high profile Black Lives Matter deaths. America was (literally) built on color, its systems put in place by white men in power – we can’t undo the damage unless we’re being actively anti-racist.
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Our pit of shame is growing deeper and deeper as each day passes – and I fear that in November it will get as far as China.
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These next few weeks are going to be wildly rocky and incredibly revealing.
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Every day and more reason to fight.
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The people are in the streets here.
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I was so discouraged by the news yesterday. It is a knife-in-the-back reminder of privilege that many people would never worry about an event such as this happening to them. I cannot imagine how hard I would resist if someone broke down my door unannounced in the middle of the night, We were always raised to believe you can use deadly force to protect yourself in your own home, but not if you are black. There is some bizarre assumption that someone must have done something wrong, but the guilty party is never assumed to be the police. Keep saying her name. Breonna Taylor.
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Put perfectly, Maggie. I cannot begin to understand the pain her family must be feeling. To wait six months only to be shown clearly – again – how little value a Black life holds is horrifying.
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It is so discouraging. Having family of color, this hits home in such a frightening way. I am so sad for her family.
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this should weigh heavily on all of us
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I really don’t understand how people are shrugging it off.
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This is just plain distressing.
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It has been a horrible 24 hours.
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Totally.
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