A former Louisville police officer convicted of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights during a police raid in which she was killed was sentenced to 33 months in prison, according to news reports, a ruling that came after the Trump administration said that the case should not have been prosecuted.
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) July 21, 2025 at 6:32 PM
From the Washington Post, “Nine people have been convicted of at least some charges in connection with the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery”: [gift link]
Five years ago, the high-profile killings of three Black Americans sparked a national reckoning over racial inequality and police conduct.
In the spring and summer of 2020, protesters flooded the streets demanding justice for the victims. Two of the deaths were caused by police officers, prompting calls for accountability and an end to police brutality and practices that protesters said were abusive.
To many Americans, the three unrelated cases were symptomatic of the unique threats and risks that face Black Americans. Ahmaud Arbery was chased by three armed White men in pickup trucks while jogging through a Georgia neighborhood in February 2020 and was shot to death. Breonna Taylor was killed by a White police officer that March while in her bed in Louisville during a botched police raid. And George Floyd died that May in Minneapolis after being pinned to the ground under the knee of a White police officer as he gasped for air…
Hankison is one of nine people who have been convicted of at least some charges in connection with the three deaths. Many jurisdictions passed police-accountability laws after the killings of Floyd and Taylor, both of whose families sued and received large financial settlements. But some of those accountability measures have been rolled back, and the Justice Department under President Donald Trump has moved away from federal investigations of police.
Here’s a rundown of what has happened in the aftermath of all three killings:
Ahmaud Arbery, 25
Travis McMichael; his father, Greg McMichael; and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were convicted on multiple charges in Arbery’s death, including state felony murder and federal hate crimes, and sentenced to life in prison. The McMichaels’ sentences included no possibility of parole…Georgia lawmakers passed hate crimes legislation and repealed the citizen’s arrest law, which had been used to justify the 25-year-old’s shooting death.
Breonna Taylor, 26
Two former Louisville police officers have been convicted in connection with the botched police raid that led to Taylor’s death on March 13, 2020.
Hankison was found guilty in November of violating Taylor’s civil rights. Jurors found he used excessive force by firing 10 shots through Taylor’s apartment window and door, both covered with shades and curtains. He was acquitted on a charge of violating the rights of three neighbors.
Kelly Goodlett pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges in August 2022, admitting that she helped falsify the search warrant used in the raid and lied to investigators to cover up the act. She is awaiting sentencing and is expected to testify against fellow Louisville officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, who were also charged with falsifying the search warrant affidavit. Their trial date has not yet been set. Goodlett faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison; it’s not clear whether the Justice Department will change its posture in her, Jaynes’s or Meany’s cases, as it did in Hankinson’s…
Louisville city officials reached a $12 million settlement with Taylor’s family, agreed to pay $2 million to Walker and approved “Breonna’s Law,” which bans local police from using no-knock warrants. In 2021, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) signed a bill into law limiting their use.
George Floyd, 46
Four former Minneapolis officers have been convicted in connection with Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death. Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, was sentenced to 22½ years on a state murder count and 20 years on a federal count of violating Floyd’s civil rights. He is serving the sentences concurrently as part of a federal plea deal and is in a federal prison in Texas, according to federal inmate records…The city of Minneapolis in 2021 agreed to pay $27 million to Floyd’s family to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit. The city in 2023 reached a nearly $9 million settlement with two people who filed suits accusing Chauvin of pressing his knee into their necks during arrests years Floyd’s death.
After Floyd’s killing, lawmakers across the country passed hundreds of ordinances, including bans on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, although some were rolled back amid fear of increased crime. A national police reform bill failed in Congress. In Minneapolis, city officials funded alternatives to policing, such as behavioral crisis response teams, a community safety center and a community commission on police oversight…
UncleEbeneezer
Thanks to all the Uncommitted assholes out there (and their defenders) for helping make this happen. Well played. You should totally lead our coalition…
Baud
Crime is really low by US standards but it’s important to the right to pretend it’s high.
zhena gogolia
OT, I guess that time I saw Black Sabbath was in their infancy, 1970 or 1971.
ETA: Looks like it was Oct 1971. Sweat Hog was the opener.
hells littlest angel
I’m so proud to live in a country in which certain people are occasionally not allowed to get away with murder.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: Sorry, I was just reading the obituaries because I can’t stand the news.
Redshift
@Baud: And the only rise in crime was pretty clearly the result of the pandemic and not police reforms, and has subsided nearly everywhere.
schrodingers_cat
The utter lawlessness in the name of law is how the colonial powers ruled. So T2.0 is just bringing that Victorian tradition home.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: They shouldn’t. Hunter Biden said aloud what many of us have been thinking. There is zero evidence that there is a groundswell of support for the DSA agenda in the broader electorate.
lowtechcyclist
It’s fucked that people have to be killed in order for even halfhearted police reforms to happen.
The Audacity of Krope
@UncleEbeneezer: Thanks to all the police violence and genocide enthusiasts in the Party, you drove away supporters of human rights.
laura
It remains a God Damned shame that this country- Our country still cannot agree that our Black Brothers and Sisters have not only the Right to live their lives as they see fit, but are fully equals among all Americans and entitled to the same Rights and obligations as their fellow, mostly white, citizens.
The injustices visited upon them in order to maintain the hollow crust of so called white superiority shames me to my core on the daily. Any victory, any justice is welcome and leaves me wanting for more.
H.E.Wolf
The salient point, to me, is the loss of Black lives.
Bearing witness is something I can do; so I’m doing it.
Melancholy Jaques
@zhena gogolia:
Tried to see Sabbath twice; both times they cancelled we were left standing in Public Hall wondering what to do with ourselves.
The Audacity of Krope
And, for me, the minimal willingness among electeds to do anything about it.
Martin
What makes you think the electorate that voted for him even care he’s DSA? There’s been countless interviews with his supporters – I’ve never even heard that brought up once
Even his policy ideas that I figured would only make sense in the context of NYC seem to be popular.
TS
@Martin:
From your link
They thought trump would support this? Republicans don’t vote for what they support, they vote for the R regardless as to the impact on their lives.
Suzanne
@H.E.Wolf:
Thank you. Agreed.
thalarctosMaritimus
@zhena gogolia: At my mother’s funeral reception, a creepy first cousin of mine was hitting on me, and another of my cousins–a good one, by contrast–overheard our mutual aunt refer to him as “the harelip”.
We compared notes and decided to blow the joint and go to a movie instead. “The Killing Fields” had just been released, so we decided to see it, and I swear to Bast, watching a movie about the Khmer Rouge genocide was better for both of our mental health than staying around our family was.
Your reading the obituaries for respite from the news reminded me of that day.
Dan B
It was awful reading all three articles.
different-church-lady
I’m lost: how did we get from “Apathetic cynical morons gave us Trump II” to “Mamdani’s too commie for mainstream appeal?” in four comments?
The Audacity of Krope
@different-church-lady: On closer examination, it’s actually the same take.
MagdaInBlack
@different-church-lady: I call it the ” Not Like That” syndrome.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: Some axes just need infinite grinding, I guess.
different-church-lady
@MagdaInBlack: I suspect I’ve arrived in the middle of a previously established argument that been ongoing for a couple of weeks now?
The Audacity of Krope
@different-church-lady: Hehe, weeks?
different-church-lady
@The Audacity of Krope: I mean this particular one. The genre is quite timeworn.
zhena gogolia
@thalarctosMaritimus: Yeah.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@zhena gogolia:
Wow!
I purchased their greatest hits “We Sold Our Soul For Rock and Roll” in the late 70s on 8-track. Still have the playable 8-track. A great, greatest hits collection.
So many musicians hitting their late 70s/early 80s are dropping…except Keith Richard who will outlive us all.
The Audacity of Krope
@different-church-lady: Well, if we’re to particularize it, then I’d put the beginning at the first Wednesday after the first Monday last November.
Baud
different-church-lady
@The Audacity of Krope: But Mamdani wasn’t even born back then!
MagdaInBlack
@different-church-lady: Sorta. I stay out of it, I just watch the show.
The Audacity of Krope
@different-church-lady: Careful, someone might believe someone might actually believe that.
Captain C
@TS: They’re voting against the imaginary Democrats in their head who pretty much don’t exist in real life.
The Audacity of Krope
@Captain C: One guy said a thing on Twitter seven years ago, so we’re now all accountable. Dem and Dem-adjacent alike.
Sister Golden Bear
@different-church-lady: Those dead horses ain’t gonna flog themselves.
Professor Bigfoot
@TS: Oh, Republicans love all that good stuff… they just don’t want Black or brown people to gain any kind of benefit from them.
We’d have had universal healthcare decades ago if Black people could be excluded (as was the case originally with Social Security).
Suzanne
Back to the topic at hand….. when I heard about Ahmaud Arbery’s murder, it upset me profoundly. He was running at the time, and the murderers decided to follow him in their truck. I run and walk a lot, and I had an incident some years ago in which I was chased by a man with a knife (I got away). There have been other incidents, but that was the scariest for me. I spend so much time when I’m running in basically a 3/10 level of emotional freakout. I imagine Arbery was similarly always on low alert, and it’s just a terrible thing, to always be watching and afraid. It’s not a good way to live life. And yet, it’s clearly critically important, and there are demons around many corners.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: I saw the video: they straight up executed him in the street, mere seconds after accosting him. Hell is too good for them.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: I watched the video, too, and I very much wish that I had not. I also have tried to bear witness to things, but it was too much.
I don’t believe in the death penalty, but if ever there was a case that would lead me to question that, it would be this one.
Martin
I think that drastically oversimplifies it, though I think that’s true to some degree. I think wrapped in there is whose rent deserves to get frozen, and who deserves free child care, and who pays for these things and whether they are state or local or federal programs.
I don’t think they thought Trump would support this, but I think they thought Trump would make substantial changes to the economy, which he has. I think they’re going to prove catastrophic, but they’re definitely not maintaining the status quo. Harris did offer up some economic ideas that weren’t terribly bold (means testing child care is better than nothing, but also sounds like a hassle), but those ideas were also against a backdrop where Democrats kept defending the Biden economy which voters didn’t think was very good – so was Harris going to change things or not? It was hard to tell.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat:
The DSA is:
columbusqueen
@The Audacity of Krope: Do you ever stop beating your BS drum?
The Audacity of Krope
@columbusqueen: I was responding to someone directly as they flog their hobby horse they literally bring into every thread they show up on and you’re asking me that?
The Audacity of Krope
@Citizen Alan: If people wanted to undermine Democrats, they would have to do little more than link to posts like you made right her
A good number of people here make it real easy for me to see how Democrats don’t make a dent in income inequality, don’t detach our country’s interests from dictators, don’t do anything about abuse by government officials. Their voters don’t want to.
satby
@columbusqueen: nope. At this point he’s basically a parody act.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: New Lines Magazine published a pretty good article about the DSA recently (May 19).. It’s by Patrick Hagen and titled, “The Left Wing Activists Who Want to Change American Politics.”
I thought Hagen was fairly objective, but somewhat more sympathetic to his subjects thsn I would hsve been. Like almost all New Lines articles, this one is long.
This link might work:
share.google/pEvnCHUdRtm4NU3YC
@The Audacity of Krope:
KSinMA
@Sister Golden Bear: Nominated!
Mr. Bemused Senior
@KSinMA: Seconded!
chemiclord
If I wanted to paint an flattering picture of the DSA, I’d say they were a well-meaning bunch with an unhealthy certainty of their ideas, and would rather be permanent back-benchers endlessly critiquing power than compromising one iota in any way in order to get any of their ideas to pass.
If I wanted to paint an unflattering picture of the DSA, I’d liken them to the German socialists who chanted, “First them, then us” as the Nazis came to power.