Breonna Taylor
Say Her Name. One saying that has been chanted across the world the summer of 2020. March 13, 2020 in the early morning tragedy struck an apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. Why? Breonna Taylor an African American woman was fatally shot to death in her apartment while lying in bed. An emergency technician with previous education from the University of Kentucky and planning to further her education to become a nurse, her life was taken in a matter of seconds. Some may say police were legally justified to enter her residence with no announcement, that may be true, but did death have to be the result? In March of 2020 Louisville police department had been conducting investigations concerning narcotics being distributed in the area. Primary suspects Adrian Walker and Jamarcus Glover had been identified as primary suspects. Were Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker suspects as well? Not primary suspects, but police had suspected after conducting video footage that her home may be where these illegal narcotics are stored. Does that give the judge the right to grant a no-knock warrant? Many question that still to this day as a judge granted the officers this warrant without hard evidence that the home of Taylor truly had been storing these narcotics.
According to, “A Key Miscalculation by Officers Contributed to the Tragic Death of Breonna Taylor” , “Officers used a battering ram to break down Taylor’s door, triggering a chain of events that would leave the unarmed 26-year-old woman fatally shot in a barrage of seemingly out-of-control police gunfire.” Social media at times has distorted the true events that led up to Taylor’s death and many protests across the country chanting “Say Her Name”. Police operations that night were tremendously and tragically flawed which led to the death of yet another innocent African American. Inside of the tragedy as Americans we are going through during COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to see news spreading worldwide about police brutality and killings of innocent African American men and women. As investigations continued CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/us/breonna-taylor-police-shooting-invs/index.html, determined miscalculations that these police officers had. Officers had assumed Taylor was home alone but was accompanied by her boyfriend. Kenneth Walker the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor legally armed under the questionable circumstances of forceable entry by police officers had fired one shot, which injured an officer in the leg. That seemingly somehow led to an officer blindly firing ten rounds of shots from the outside patio of the apartment and killed Breonna Taylor.
Louisville police officers have created one of the main drives for demonstrations that erupted the spring and summer of 2020 over social injustice and policing across the country. According the author of NY Times who wrote, “What to Know about Breonna Taylor’s Death”, https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html, “A grand jury in September indicted a former Louisville detective involved in the raid, Brett Hankison, for wanton endangerment of neighbors whose apartment was hit when he fired without a clear line of sight into the sliding glass patio door and window of Ms. Taylor’s apartment.” Even though Hankison had been charged with endangerment the other two officers who fired had no charges announced against them. NO ONE had been charged with the death of Breonna Taylor. Two detectives that had been on the case Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes were terminated in December, but as of recently had not been fired until January 5th. According to The New York Times article, “What to Know about Breonna Taylor’s Death”, https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html, the author states, “It found that the only support for a grand jury’s conclusion that the officers had announced themselves before bursting into Ms. Taylor’s apartment beyond the assertions of the officers themselves was the account of a single witness who had given inconsistent statements.” After video footage from the scene, witness accounts, statements by police officers and forensic reports it conveyed to everyone that the raid was compromised by poor execution and planning.
As the case has proceeded things have come into contradiction like the police stating the postal office had part in the inspection prior to the no-knock warrant being granted. Tony Gooden the Louisville Postal Inspector has stated the office was not apart of an inspection regarding the possible drug trafficking packages delivered to Breonna Taylor’s home. According to ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-inside-investigation-breonna-taylors-killing-aftermath/story?id=71217247, “This revelation validates what we already knew: This young woman was brutally and unjustifiably killed by Louisville police, who supplied false information on the warrant they used to enter her home unannounced. Gooden further stated that ‘no packages of interest were going there,’” That statement was said by Ben Crump who had been helping the family of Breonna Taylor. Louisville, Kentucky Metro Council unanimously passed the Breonna’s Law, which outlaws no-knock warrants and body cameras are now required.
Even though no officer was officially charged and sentenced, as a movement and American our eyes have continued to be opened to the social injustice in the United States. Breonna Taylor is just one example out of many African Americans who have been killed by police reported or not. As a community we live in fear every day for our lives.
