Breonna Taylor, a Black woman and ER technician, was asleep in her apartment when three police officers broke in. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a warning shot, which allegedly struck one of the officers in the leg. The officers then fired 32 rounds into the apartment, five of which struck and killed Taylor.
The shooting took place on March 13. On Sept. 23, one of the three officers, Brett Hankison, was indicted by a grand jury on three counts of wanton endangerment — the “endangered” party being the family of three living next door to Taylor, not Taylor herself. None of the officers have been indicted for Taylor’s death.
Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly, the three Louisville Metro police officers, had been investigating two men they believed were selling drugs. One of the men the officers were searching for had dated Taylor a few years prior, and the police believed that Taylor was still in contact with the man. The officers were given a “no-knock” search warrant that was changed to a “knock and announce” warrant before the raid.
Whether the police announced their presence is a topic of debate.
The New York Times interviewed approximately 11 of Taylor’s neighbors and found that only one of them heard the officers announce their presence. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced last Wednesday that an independent investigation concluded the officers announced their presence. However, while Walker and Taylor heard the knocking, they did not hear the police announce their presence. In Walker’s 911 call, he told a dispatcher that “somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend.”
Taylor’s case drew national attention in May, and she has been touted by social media and celebrities as a face of the Black Lives Matter movement ever since. #SayHerName was a hashtag started on June 5 to spread awareness about Taylor’s case, and also has expanded to include other Black women. But while outrage over her death has been constant, she has still not truly found justice.
Only one of the officers in Taylor’s case, Brett Hankison, has been fired. The other two have been placed on administrative leave. On Sept. 15, Louisville officials paid Taylor’s family $12 million as a settlement for their wrongful-death lawsuit. The city also passed “Breonna’s Law,” which banned “no-knock” search warrants.
In an email sent by Jonathan Mattingly to his fellow LMPD officers, he laments not having the support of the city. “I know we did the legal, moral and ethical thing that night. It’s sad how the good guys are demonized, and criminals are canonized…Remember you are just a pawn in the Mayors (sic) political game. I’m proof they do not care about you or your family, and you are replaceable.” (Mattingly was the officer who was shot in the leg during the raid.)
Personally, the email gives me flashbacks to a Junior Police Academy camp I attended in 2016 at my local police department. The officers leading the camp spoke about police work as though they were soldiers going to war. They spoke about citizens with an “us or them” mentality — with an emphasis on “us” being the ones who had to make it home at the end of the day. The lives of citizens, the complicated social problems that lead to crimes, didn’t matter as long as we got to go home safe.
I left the criminal justice path after high school, but it haunts me how the mentality I saw displayed in 2016 is reflected in Mattingly’s email. “This is not an us against society,” he said, “but it is good versus evil.” He describes police as “human beings with flaws, feelings and emotions,” but where does that leave everyone else?
Obviously I can’t speak for Breonna Taylor’s family, and I can’t speak for the thousands of Black Americans across the country who have watched as Black people have died and nothing has changed. But until we see reform in the police system that gets rid of the mentality that cops are “good” and criminals are “evil,” until we can go at least a year without a Black person unjustly being killed by police, until we live in such a world where I don’t have to write articles like this, there is no justice.
No justice, no peace.
Categories: Opinion
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