Mistermix mentioned this yesterday, but I think it is worth closer inspection:
Four current and former Louisville, Kentucky, police officers were charged Thursday with federal crimes connected to the 2020 death of Breonna Taylor.
The 26-year-old emergency medical technician was shot and killed by police who had carried out a nighttime “no-knock” warrant to storm her home while she was sleeping with her boyfriend. Believing they were intruders, her boyfriend fired one shot at the officers using a handgun he legally owned. The officers responded by firing 22 bullets, killing Taylor with a shot to the chest.
The fatal shooting of Taylor, a Black woman, galvanized racial justice protests in the spring and summer of 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The charges against defendants Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany, Brett Hankison and Kelly Goodlett, include civil rights violations, conspiracy, use of excessive force offenses and obstruction.
Charging documents state that three of the officers, Jaynes, Meany and Goodlett, lied in order to obtain a warrant they used to search Taylor’s apartment in an act that violated federal civil rights laws and led to Taylor’s death, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a news conference.
“We allege that the defendants knew their actions in falsifying the affidavit could create a dangerous situation, and we allege these unlawful acts resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death,” Garland said.
The question is why? For arrest numbers? To justify the existence of that unit? For asset forfeiture money? Or maybe we should revisit the amended lawsuit by Breonna’s family:
The police raid of Breonna Taylor’s home that ended with police killing her was connected to a political plan to clear a Louisville, Kentucky, street for a real estate development, according to an amended lawsuit filed by Taylor’s mother.
Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was shot eight times after police broke down the door to her apartment while executing a nighttime, no-knock warrant in a narcotics investigation on March 13. Her mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April against the officers involved: Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly.
The Louisville Metro Police Department has since fired Hankison, one of the officers who fired into the apartment.
***Mayor Greg Fischer is mentioned in the lawsuit but is not a defendant. The lawsuit claims that Fischer wanted to incorporate large-scale development in west Louisville to leave a visible legacy for his time in office, which is currently set to expire in January 2023. A recent development initiative, called Vision Russell, intends to redevelop the Beecher Terrace public housing complex. The lawsuit says the effort has stagnated for six years.
Vision Russell’s website refers to itself as a Choice Neighborhood Initiative project designed to “implement a dynamic and transformative plan for the Russell neighborhood, including the Beecher Terrace public housing development.”
Representatives with the Vision Russell initiative did not return CNN’s request for comment.
And then there is this:
The attorneys representing Breonna Taylor’s family now claim a development project was the reason police focused on her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. Part of the project includes Elliott Avenue, where Glover rented a house, the lawsuit states, and where the City of Louisville has recently acquired several properties.
A warranty deed obtained by WAVE 3 News Troubleshooters, dated June 5th, 2020, shows the city purchased Glover’s rented home from Law-Mar Inc. for $1. The estimated home value was more than $17,000.
A map, which shows the City of Louisville logo and the title of the Elliott Avenue Project, shows several of the properties surrounding Glover’s home were labeled as “city controlled” and have already been purchased or demolished. The map is dated November 2019.
This is some truly evil shit and if proven, more than just a few cops need hard time.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
Holy shit.
MisterForkbeard
Wow. Since John got his computer fixed he’s actually posting here again. Love it. :)
Actually on topic: This is really evil, if true. But also wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Miss Bianca
OMG. This case lacked only a development angle to become a true Axis of Evil. And now we see one.
OzarkHillbilly
SSDD. Or so it feels like.
Jake Gibson
Kentucky AG David Cameron’s “investigation” is looking less like a whitewashing and more like a coverup.
BTW he is running for governor.
Mike E
Wow, police harassing and assaulting African Americans while serving the interests of property owners, how Originalist!
Patricia Kayden
So they killed her so that a housing development could make some $$$? What the actual hell? Speechless.
Patricia Kayden
@Jake Gibson: I hope he loses badly. Just an awful human being. He made it clear that he had no interest in getting justice for Ms. Taylor’s family. He would be a horrible Governor in the vein of DeathSantis and Abbott.
MisterForkbeard
@Jake Gibson: “whitewashing” seems very appropriate here
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
They killed her so the mayor could put building a housing development on his resume when he ran for higher office.
ETA: Among other reasons. I’m sure the police would have been happy to shoot her regardless of the housing development. Part of the reason things like this happen is because there’s something in them for everyone. The developer and the mayor get their housing development. The police get to look like they’re doing something in the war on drugs. The prison industrial complex gets slave labor. It’s that multitude of interests that keep this stuff happening.
Poe Larity
Gentrification at gunpoint. Whatever Radley Balko said twenty years ago.
C Stars
L’ville cops are corrupt to the core and armed to the teeth. They are looking for a reason to use their toys. I have family who live there and the Breonna Taylor incident was not a surprise to them because they had witnessed similar–if lesser, because no one actually died–atrocities in their neighborhood. Also, maybe it’s sample size, but the people I spoke to, way back then, knew that the harassment was part of a developer’s scheme.
Parfigliano
Pigs serving monied interests and politicians setting up their run for higher office. American as apple pie.
Nicole
That article is infuriating to read. The sheer amount of lying, falsifying, and all around illegal bullshit the cops did to end this woman’s life. Ugh. I remember a few right-wing nut jobs I knew back when it happened latching on to the allegation that her ex-boyfriend used her address for deliveries as proof she deserved it. First of all, no. Second of all, completely invented by the corrupt cops. I’m sure that revelation won’t be all over the sewage sources they go to for “news.”
Roger Moore
@C Stars:
It’s not too surprising that people who live in the area would know more about the situation than the rest of us do. It’s a serious knock on national media that it’s taken this long for the real estate side of it to come to our attention. It’s their job to figure this stuff out and transmit it to the public, and they’ve failed.
Tom Levenson
Time for a federal investigation. And though I know the rule is that if you think it’s a RICO violation, it’s not RICO, this sure smells of organization and crime…
Ruckus
White people being complete shits for money, murdering human beings. What a shock. And I’m as white as snow and have been seeing this shit all my life. It made no sense when I was a kid, it makes no sense today.
I wish they would grow the fuck up, find the tiniest bit of humanity and quit making complete and utter fucking assholes of themselves creating dead bodies because of their hate. I hold the absolute tiniest bit of hope that humanity will actually prevail in place of the fucking racism and fucking hate. But some think their destiny is to uphold the major premise of their blood line, that their skin color makes them better than someone else, and yet it’s this demand that humans that don’t look like them that should not exist. They are correct that there are humans that should not exist, but all they have to do is look in a mirror to see who and what that is. If it wasn’t that what we call humanity has acted like complete and utter fucking shit since the beginning of time, seemingly not learning a damn thing about actual humans, who, and what the word even means and hating with every fiber of their shitty beings maybe we could actually have something besides history repeating itself over and over.
Ruckus
@Tom Levenson:
Is it organized to the level of a RICO? It certainly has some level of organization, it has a local level of being known, as C Stars told us at comment 12. But then hate and racism are rather common denominators of human beings.
Ben Cisco
@Ruckus:
So do I, but in the absence of that, prosecution and incarceration (for a good long time) will have to suffice.
C Stars
@Roger Moore: Honestly for some reason I had assumed the real-estate aspect of it was common knowledge. Surprising to see it reported on now as though it were new.
Also I just can’t emphasize enough how racist the city is. It’s one of those places that plays a really good Southern congeniality game, acting like everyone’s friendly with everyone else, but the cracks in that facade are visible everywhere. I went to a wedding at a segregated club there in the 2000s (and yes, departed as soon as I sussed).
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Levenson: WhateverHatHeIsTodayHat is right. It’s almost never RICO, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be conspiracy to violate civil rights.
Suzanne
This is abhorrent.
I don’t understand, tho. If the house was rented by her boyfriend, the police didn’t need to target him at all. They just needed to buy it from the landlord.
kalakal
This is utterly reprehensible. I hope the investigation goes way further than the murderous goons. The people behind this are monsters
Tom Levenson
@Omnes Omnibus: I hear you.
But whatever the relevant statutes, it’s clear to me, not a lawyer and outside a courtroom, that there are a bunch of people in this case who need both to be sued for everything their families have ever owned and to spend a considerable amount of the three score and ten wearing orange.
tam1MI
Blockbusting has existed since before most everyone on this blog were born. It should have died out long ago, but… well..
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Levenson: Absolutely.
p.a.
Poisoning and polluting the target population is just too slow in today’s environment I suppose.
Antonius
@Ruckus: Preach!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, except they are tools, and while it’s good reinforce “just following orders isn’t an excuse”, the people who put them up to this shit needs get spanked too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s even more pathetic than that, it’s so the mayor will have something to brag about in the retirement home. Fucking banality of evil.
ExpatDanBKK
I vote “for the money.” Seasoned by more than a large pinch of racism. But that’s just me…
Jay
@Suzanne:
the City did buy her boyfriends house from the previous Owner, paid $1 for a $17,000 house, ( that’s hinky),
but just because the City owns the house, it doesn’t mean the lease is void and they can kick the tenants out.
The tenants need to break the lease, by say, being incarcerated or being dead.
Joe Mayo
They could have just borrowed ED209. New Detroit is all cleaned up now.