Over the past several months, my various social media feeds have been bombarded with demands for justice in the death of Louisville resident Breonna Taylor. The prevailing narratives were that Taylor was shot dead by police serving a "no-knock warrant" while she slept in her bed (much of that not true, BTW). As such, the only justice that would be acceptable in the minds of many would be the officers being charged with murder. But since it had been established that police did knock and announce themselves but fired shots only after being fired upon by Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, murder charges were not going to occur.
The official charges were handed down Wednesday.
One of the police officers involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, in March was charged Wednesday with first-degree wanton endangerment, but the officer whose shot killed Taylor was not indicted.
Judge Annie O’Connell announced the charges against the former Louisville detective, Brett Hankison, who was fired in June, during a grand jury proceeding. A warrant will be issued for his arrest, O'Connell said.
The charges accuse Hankison of firing blindly into several apartments and recklessly endangering Taylor’s neighbors, but do not charge him with firing at or killing Taylor. Two other officers involved in the March 13 incident, Detective Myles Cosgrove and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, were not charged.
Cosgrove fired the shot that killed Taylor, according to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, but the grand jury considered his action justifiable.
As expected, mass unrest hit the streets of Louisville, this time resulting in two police officers being shot.
This saga is once again an example of what happens when media outlets cherry pick facts (or misstate them altogether) and present them to a populace already on edge over racial tensions. While the media isn't responsible for the actions of rioters and looters, they no doubt contributed to an already palpable outrage over this case.
So was this the legally correct decision? It would appear so. However, Breonna Taylor is dead and she shouldn't be. So the law being on the officers' sides provides zero consolation to her family.
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3 comments:
Sorry, but it is not the nature of "law and order" to "bring consolation to the family." The difference between law and order and anarchy is that in the former the guilty suffer, and in the latter it is the innocent.
All correct. But one could argue that some of these laws need a serious overhaul. That is achieved through the legislative process, not rioting in the streets and shooting at police officers.
If you want to argue, there is a vast gulf between "justice" in these very rare cases, and absolutely no concern for the many thousands of cases where black people kill each other.
George Floyd killed himself. The guy in Wisconsin threatened officers, his kids and his wife, and the guy in Florida shot at police. Michael Brown was in the process of attacking the officer in Ferguson, after having attempted to shoot him once, when he was shot. There is no truth in most of these excuses to demonstrate, and NO excuse for rioting.
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