Tonight, I’m thinking of Breonna Taylor’s family who is still grieving the loss of a daughter and sister.
We must never stop speaking Breonna’s name as we work to reform our justice system, including overhauling no-knock warrants.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 24, 2020
Radley Balko, at the Washington Post:
Wednesday’s announcement from Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron about criminal charges in the Breonna Taylor case set off a frenzy of misinformation on social media. Based on what we do know — which I’ve culled from my own reporting, reporting from the New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal, as well as from conversations with the lawyers for Taylor’s family — the decision to charge Detective Brett Hankison with wanton endangerment was probably correct, as was the decision not to charge the other officers involved in the shooting. If ballistics had conclusively shown that one of the bullets from Hankison’s gun killed Taylor, he could be charged with reckless homicide, but according to Cameron, the bullets that struck Taylor could not be matched to Hankison’s gun. There’s the problem that the police who conducted the raid were relying on a warrant procured by another officer, which was then signed by a judge. There were many flaws and abrogations in that process, but it would be unfair and not legal to hold them accountable for any of that.
But “not illegal” should not mean “immune from criticism.” Part of the problem was Cameron himself, who was selective in what information he released to the point of misleading the public about key facts in the case. (This raises real questions about whether the grand jury was also misled. That’s why an attorney for Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who fired at the police during the raid, is demanding that Cameron release the evidence that was presented to the grand jury.)
Furthermore, Taylor’s death was not, as Cameron suggested, simply a tragedy for which no one is to blame. The police work in this case was sloppy, and the warrant service was reckless. Taylor is dead because of a cascade of errors, bad judgment and dereliction of duty. And it’s important that the record on this be clear. So here are some correctives for the misinformation I’ve seen online…
“This is just an all-around tragedy. We shouldn’t focus on who to blame, whether its police, prosecutors, Walker or Taylor.”
The most serious questions here concern the investigation itself, and why these officers were asked to serve a warrant on Taylor’s home in the first place. There’s the lie about the postal inspector. There is the fact that despite the surveillance on Taylor’s home, the police didn’t know there was another person inside. There are the police bullets that were inadvertently fired into surrounding apartments. There’s the cut-and-paste language used to secure the no-knock portion of the warrant. There’s also the fact that the officer who procured the warrant was not part of the raid team. There’s the fact that five officers involved in the Taylor raid were involved in another violent, botched raid on an innocent family in 2018…
To simply blow this off as a tragedy for which no one is to blame is an insult to the life and legacy of Taylor, but also to the dozens of innocent people who have been gunned down in their own homes before her. And the effort by Cameron and others to make all of this go away by feeding the public half-truths that blame the victims in this story — Taylor and Walker — for Taylor’s death is inexcusable.
We could prevent the next Breonna Taylor. We could ban forced entry raids to serve drug warrants. We could hold judges accountable for signing warrants that don’t pass constitutional muster. We could demand that police officers wear body cameras during these raids to hold them accountable, and that they be adequately punished when they fail to activate them. We could do a lot to make sure there are no more Breonna Taylors. The question is whether we want to.
It should outrage Americans and Kentuckians that two ?@DailyCaller? reporters were arrested while covering protests in Louisville, despite identifying themselves as press. #FirstAmendment https://t.co/GwIohTkvw4
— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) September 24, 2020
Here’s CNN’s report on the arrests.
the cops should release your reporters but you motherfuckers spent the last three months licking badges & cheering them on as they beat & arrested innocent civilians and I’ll be goddamned if I forget it https://t.co/99nmhheZcg
— kilgore trout, non mini-stroke haver (@KT_So_It_Goes) September 24, 2020
This is from a Fox News interview with one of the reporters arrested:
… Ventura said he was surprised to find that a majority of the men he was detained with had traveled from Louisville from out of state to take part in the protests.
“Most of the men that I was in the holding cell with were from out of state. We had some folks coming in from Indiana. Multiple folks coming from Detroit and Ohio. They all came in angered off the [grand jury] announcement,” he recalled.
Ventura said he was told that since many of the men “were held in the cell for so long, they said that they are actually not coming out to protest anymore, and if they do come out to protest, they will actually be coming home before the curfew.”
Outside agitators, y’know. Bet those guys learned a lesson!
Aleta
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gw7y/initial-police-report-didnt-conclude-breonna-taylors-boyfriend-shot-a-cop-in-the-leg
… Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron stated as fact that Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired a shot that hit an officer in the leg that night. But the initial ballistics report, which was conducted by Kentucky State Police and included in the investigative file provided to the attorney general’s office by the Louisville Metro Police Department, failed to prove that Walker fired the bullet that hit the officer, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly.
…
Walker was charged with attempted murder of a police officer and held in jail for two weeks on a $250,000 bond. The charges have since been dropped, although Walker may still be re-indicted.
A portion of the report, which references the bullet believed to have hit Mattingly, concludes that “due to limited markings of comparative value, [the] item was neither identified nor eliminated as having been fired from #45,” which corresponds to the magazine found in Walker’s gun
[Screenshot of the report is at ice Vlink]
According to Mattingly’s testimony, Walker was approximately 20 feet away when he fired his weapon and shot the officer in the leg. But photos of Mattingly’s wound depict a bruising pattern and coloration consistent with having been shot from close proximity, according to Patrick McLaughlin, who teaches forensic science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and served as a detective in the NYPD for 20 years.
“The easiest way to know for sure if he was shot from close up is through a gunshot residue test,” said McLaughlin, who spent most of his tenure at the NYPD in the Evidence Collection Team. The test detects gun powder residue, the presence of which indicates someone or something was shot from within three feet. McLaughlin described the test as standard procedure in cases like this. But no gunshot residue test appears to have been performed on Mattingly’s wound or clothing immediately following the incident or at any time before the end of May, when the criminal case against Walker was dropped.
… McLaughlin, who reviewed the preliminary report, said he thought it was plausible the unusual bruising pattern was caused by Sgt. Mattingly’s wallet, which was in his front pocket, even if he wasn’t shot at close range, as the crime scene photos suggest. … McLaughlin also thinks it’s possible that what looks like gun powder residue is actually something else.
But he added that “in a case like this where you have the chance to let science help support or refute something, I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t perform the test.”
In Wednesday’s press conference, Attorney General Cameron maintained there was no evidence that Mattingly was hit by friendly fire. He made no mention of the inconclusive ballistics report, nor did he point to the results of a gunshot residue test that would support his claim that Mattingly was not hit by a fellow officer.
Fair Economist
Double jeopardy does not apply to grand jury indictment. We find out whether the grand jury was manipulated or corrupt, correct the problem, and go back again for a just result.
WaterGirl
@Aleta: Lying sons of bitches.
Out with the old:
Serve and ProtectIn with the new: Protect Your Own
Another Scott
Thanks for this.
Indeed.
We all know that people are human and make mistakes. Systems fail. Humans try to protect their tribes and their organizations. We all know that.
What matters is what happens after there are mistakes. We have to be willing to force changes to prevent mistakes like these from happening again. And people in authority who aren’t willing or able to do that must be replaced by people who are up to the job. And systems that refuse reform must be changed as well.
The status quo can no longer be tut-tutted away with “mistakes were made”…
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
Good time to remember this Scalia quote.
RinaX
Thank you for the article. It sums up a lot of the thoughts I’ve had trouble articulating about the entire saga.
lowtechcyclist
And this gets us back to the Supreme Court.
The Fourth Amendment says that Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker had the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures in their persons and in their house. But that Amendment has been so gutted by judicial decisions that it’s barely brought up in the discussions I’ve read of this case. Everybody already knows it’s been riddled with exceptions and loopholes, and barely protects anybody anymore.
So when the Dems get their turn, I want to see someone (ideally several someones) nominated to the Supreme Court who believe the Fourth Amendment should mean what it says.
mrmoshpotato
Detroit? Surely so committed to racial justice that they drove out of Michigan, down through all of Ohio, and then part of Kentucky! All while never thinking “We could protest in Detroit!”
Makes the trash that came into Chicago from Galesburg in May look like child’s play.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud: We can put that one in the Hall of Infamy, right next to CJ Roberts saying that the Civil Rights Jubilee had arrived, so we could toss the Voting Rights Act.
lowtechcyclist
All the way from Indiana?? You mean, like, right across the river? That’s like protesters in DC coming all the way from Virginia.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is Balko the only real libertarian in the country ? or at least the only one with a platform? We all know Rand Paul’s an addle-pated fraud, and Amash is… has he been checked for a body temperature?
Has Gary Johnson ever spoken up on police violence ?
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
This is not about mistakes made or systems failing. This is about policing procedures designed to let cops brutalize black and brown people, and to provide cops, prosecutors and judges with instant and exoneration for any misdeeds.
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
And on this case, black AG Cameron sided with the cops. He is a Trumpista. Toxic masculinity and bigotry are ugly things.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So it was utter incompetency as opposed to deliberate murder. So that doesn’t make the woman any less dead and the parents are going to rightfully sue the shit out of the city for wrongful death and the goobers wont get it; by coddling incompetents and not subjecting them to the same review any other professional gets is just going suck the life out of their own communities.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What he said.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I know it’s a broad brush, but libertarians tend to be college educated white males. Police brutality is just not going to be part of their experience.
Brachiator
This case and most of the discussion about it drives me crazy.
A morning talk radio host who loves cops and likes to imagine being one brought recent information about this case to my attention. He and his sidekick talked about drug houses as heavily fortified buildings filled with heavily armed drug dealers and their heavily armed henchmen, and so a “no knock” warrent and battering ram was necessary to keep the cops safe. They forgot that the police broke into Taylor’s apartment, not a drug house, and that she was not a drug lord and she was not armed.
We also now know that the police did not have a “no knock” warrant. I still don’t know what drugs were supposedly involved, or whether the police went to the wrong address. Why they were so hot to need to break into Taylor’s apartment is still not known.
But no matter what, the actions of the police here were excessive. I keep hearing news anchors calmly explaining that Taylor was killed because her boyfriend had a gun and the police were defending themselves. I don’t see any rule that says that the police can shoot everyone in the house that they break into in order to defend themselves.
In fact, because unspecified “drugs” were involved, news reporters and cop lovers don’t even have to pop up the convenient lie that officers thought that Taylor had or was reaching for a weapon. Once you say drugs, the police can kill anyone. The only other word with similar power would be if you could say that Taylor was a suspected terrorist.
And almost no one tries to imagine events from Taylor’s point of view. Bang on my door at midnight when I am asleep or groggy and I don’t think I would hear the announcement “Police,” especially if the banging is quickly followed by my door being knocked down.
And I am certainly in danger from the cops because they are trying to use surprise and overwhelming force and don’t know how many people are in the apartment. They have deliberately maximized danger to themselves and consequently maximized my own risk.
And if they riddle me with more bullets than they did Bonnie and Clyde it is at best a mistake.
This is insanity.
But you cannot just focus on the cops. The idea of these kinds of raids is wrongheaded. Even if they thought that Taylor was receiving drugs, why not check that more carefully and if necessary approach her in the day?
Another Scott
@Brachiator: I’m talking about the mistakes (as in failure to follow procedures by the officers, the court, etc., etc., as outlined in the quoted excerpts). Whether the existing rules and laws on the books are sufficient (and they’re clearly not) is a different issue.
Having great laws and procedures aren’t worth much if they aren’t followed by the people in the system who are supposed to be guided and constrained by them.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I posted a comment just before your reply. The assumptions and procedures are defective and the underlying systemic bigotry allows black and brown people to be treated as targets with no recourse except to hope the cops at the end of the process don’t kill them.
Say “war on drugs” and any atrocity is permitted.
JaySinWA
I am kind of at a loss for not charging others with reckless endangerment. Given that none of the shots hit the shooter and shots hit other apartments as well as Briana, It seems unlikely that all the endangering shots came from the one firing from outside.
Hopefully there was a good set of forensic evidence retained to test the analysis for later suits.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Louisville signing a 12 page settlement and paying $12M to her family indicate “any atrocity is permitted” is false.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/breonna-taylor/2020/09/20/how-louisvilles-12-million-breonna-taylor-settlement-came-together/3483164001/
Your hyperbole is getting in the way of seeing what I’m saying. Of course the laws and procedures need to be changed. But we also need humans to take the laws and procedures seriously and follow them. Without that, better laws and procedures won’t matter.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
sdhays
What’s this about?
Mike G
This raises real questions about whether the grand jury was also misled. That’s why an attorney for Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who fired at the police during the raid, is demanding that Cameron release the evidence that was presented to the grand jury
Corrupt AF.
““This is just an all-around tragedy. We shouldn’t focus on who to blame, whether its police, prosecutors, Walker or Taylor.”
That’s the smoking gun right there. Somehow I don’t think they’d be quite as reticent to assign blame if a cop had been murdered.
But let’s not quibble about who murdered who, mistakes were made, look forward not back, don’t play the blame game…the whole litany of Republican accountability-evading rhetoric.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Really?
The money paid is cold comfort. And the settlement includes these kickers.
Even the local paper in the link talks about “the events that ended Taylor’s life.” They cannot seem to say that police officers shot and killed her.
BTW, in Los Angeles, my home base, more or less, there is this.
And yet, brutality continues. The settlements are just the cost of doing business. It is very difficult to find data on the number of cops actually convicted of misconduct. But there is this:
There are no consequences for misconduct.
I see exactly what you are saying, but you need to try to see things from the perspective of the hunted instead of talking about laws and procedures, especially when the settlement in this case says that law and procedure were followed but somehow, through no one’s fault, a woman got shot to death in her own home.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Scalia was full of shit, as always.
Villago Delenda Est
@lowtechcyclist: For that idiotic finding, along with the absolute abomination that is Citizens United, Roberts will be remembered along with Taney in the USSC Hall of Shame.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: So much of this can be traced to the roots of American law enforcement in the slave patrols of the South.
If you’re blah, you’re obviously wrong. At least escaped slaves had the marginal protection of being the property of some wealthy white man.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: You know as well as anyone that settlements (almost) never explicitly admit wrong-doing.
My point is, your comment that “any atrocity is permitted” is not true.
Changes will happen if people continue to demand them, and they’ll be more effective if they address more than revising the text on a page.
Cheers,
Scott.
Achrachno
@Another Scott: On the general topic, I see that the witness who said the police identified themselves had earlier said they didn’t. Reported by Vice and Yahoo News. Change of story is a big deal in this case no?
“Aarin Sarpee initially told investigators that he didn’t hear police say who they were before ramming through Taylor’s door. Two months later, he drastically changed his recollection.”
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I have a friend in Somerville who was woken up by cops busting down his door in the middle of the night because they had the wrong address. He was a middle-aged white guy which probably put him in less danger. But he was shaken for days. It wasn’t the kind of thing you walk off immediately.
The same people who constantly excuse this kind of stuff are always insisting people should have guns for self-defense against some kind of home invasion. Suppose you’ve got your self-defense gun and the police do this? You could easily die even if you’ve got the cops’ favorite skin color.
Jay
@Another Scott:
every place ( except Philly) where Citizens demanded Defunding, and created enough pressure to get it to City Council, it was either voted down, if passed vetoed by the Mayor, or watered down to be performative.
and every step of the process, resulted in a KKKop Riot.
Despite it being illegal, Portland KKKops still use tear gas and pal around with Nazis.
Despite it being illegal, NYPD killed Eric Gardner with a chokehold, which NYC made double illegal but NYPD KKKops still use chokeholds.
How many times have the LAPD been “reformed”, but they stll need reforms.
The only US City to sucessfully “reform” the Police, was Camden. They fired all the KKKops, dismantled the Police Department and Jail system, and started over from scratch, completely reimagining Community Safety.
Aleta
@Achrachno: Here’s a link to that Vice story from this afternoon: The Only Witness Who Heard Police Announce Themselves at Breonna Taylor’s Door Changed His Story
Jay
@Aleta:
not suspicious at all,
also “funny”, the 3 bullets that resulted in “endangerment” charges, went into a white family’s apartment.
None of the bullets that went into black neighbours apartments or Brianna Taylor, resulted in “endangerment” charges.
J R in WV
I didn’t know that people could only assemble to protest in their own homes, can’t cross state lines to protest in other locations.
When did this change happen to the citizens of the US?
Why wasn’t the whole nation notified of this change to the Constitution?
Could we reverse this change to our First Amendment rights — or is it too late for reversing this change to the Constitution???
J R in WV
@Jay:
Well… here in America, nothing endangers Black folk. Haven’t you noticed this? //
Seriously, this doesn’t surprise me that much. Do we know if any black citizens were on the Grand Jury?
I was on a local grand jury once, several years ago, and there were no people of color on that body at all. Of course, the population of non-whlte folks in my county of residence is really, REALLY low.
But if shots fired into black neighbors’ apartments at 2 or 3 am didn’t result in any endangerment charges, well, this is my SHOCKED Face:
;~)
~!!~
Aleta
Vanity Fair article, Taylor’s mother’s words as she told her story to Ta Nehesi Coates.
It’s much longer, but here’s what she said about the police:
“Kenny calls me in the middle of the night. He says, Somebody kicked in the door and shot Breonna. … I rush over to her house. When I get there, the street’s just flooded with police—it’s a million of them. And there’s an officer at the end of the road, and I tell her who I am and that I need to get through there because something had happened to my daughter. She tells me I need to go to the hospital because there was two ambulances that came through, and the first took the officer and the second took whoever else was hurt. Of course I go down to the hospital, and I tell them why I am there. The lady looks up Breonna and doesn’t see her and says, Well, I don’t think she’s here yet. I wait for about almost two hours. The lady says, Well, ma’am, we don’t have any recollection of this person being on the way.
…
So I go back to the apartment. … I tell the officer there that I need to get in the apartment, that something is going on with my daughter. He tells me to hang tight. He tells me hang tight, he’ll get a detective over there to talk to me. It takes a little while for him to come. He introduces himself… he kind of just goes on to ask me if I knew anybody who would want to hurt Breonna, or Kenny, or if I thought they were involved in anything. And I go, Absolutely not. Both of them got jobs. They go to work. They hang out with each other. That’s about it. I ask where Kenny is, and the detective tells me, Hold on. I’ll be back.
But it’s about another hour or so before he comes back. He asks me if Breonna and Kenny had been having any problems or anything. I say, Absolutely not. Kenny would never do anything to Breonna.
And then I say, Where’s Kenny. I need to talk to Kenny. He says, Well, Kenny’s at one of our offices. He’s trying to help us piece together what happened here tonight.
We are out there for a number of hours afterward. It’s kind of chilly. I leave. I get coffee and come back. I’m still standing out there waiting. It’s about 11 in the morning when the officer comes over and says that they are about done and they are wrapping up, and we will be able to get in there once they are finished. I say, Where’s Breonna, why won’t anybody say where Breonna is? He says, Well, ma’am, she’s still in the apartment. And I know what that means.
…
The first day, … I am having these thoughts—Maybe it’s not Breonna, because I never see her, mind you. The police never let me see her. But I know it’s her house, you know what I’m saying? But just the fact that I physically haven’t seen her…. And then, I can’t talk to Kenny. But the last thing I know is Kenny called me and said, Somebody kicked that door in. And I’m thinking, Who would want to do that? What is happening? My head is all over the place.
And the police aren’t talking to me or telling me anything. My daughter’s dead and they’re not telling me anything. And I keep wondering, Why would somebody do this?
Until I actually learn on the news that the police did this. It is probably the next day. …. And I am like, Why would they ask if somebody wanted to hurt her? Now I’m confused.
Because you asked me whether I knew someone who wanted to hurt my daughter. But you did it. Why couldn’t you have just told me that the police did this? You asked me if somebody wanted to hurt “them.”
And Kenny… you said you had Kenny over at the office trying to help you figure out what happened. But come to find out, you got Kenny down here trying to charge him with attempted murder. And Breonna’s gone. What the hell?
…
On the news they are saying it’s a drug raid gone bad. And it’s so common to hear these things—drug raid. Cops met with gunfire. One suspect dead. The other in custody. And that’s how they’re describing what happened with Breonna. Breonna and Kenny are drug dealers. That is how it’s being portrayed on the news. And I am pissed off because I know how hard Breonna worked. I know that Breonna ain’t about that life. …
… And I cannot let them do that to her. With COVID happening, it feels like they want to just sweep this under the rug real quick. But we will not let this go. “
Jay
@J R in WV:
https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/anti-rioting-act-civil-disorder-law-doj-barr-trump-consitutional_n_5f6a012cc5b655acbc701ca2?ri18n=true#click=https://t.co/8WONpQEtAg
Another Scott
@Aleta: Thanks for the except.
She, and we, are right to be furious about what happened.
And we have to do what we can to make sure it – the whole process that lead to the attack on her home and her death and all of their cover-up attempts afterward – do not happen again.
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
@Jay: In your first sentence did you mean Camden? To the best of my knowledge Philly hasn’t done this.
Jay
@frosty:
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.inquirer.com/news/budget-police-philadelphia-kenney-covid-20200618.html%3foutputType=amp
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Nonsense. Breonna Taylor is dead. Huge settlements have not changed anything.
This is irrelevant to anything that I have noted in this thread.
Procopius
@Mike G: It wasn’t a Republican who said, “… look forward, not back.”
Brachiator
@Aleta:
Belatedly, thanks for the link to the Vanity Fair article.