LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Breonna Taylor’s family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to no charges being brought against police officers who killed the Black woman during a raid at her apartment.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but prosecutors and Grand Jury members are bound by the facts and by the law,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuhn said in a statement.
Breonna’s boyfriend’s lawyer doesn’t think that AG Cameron even gave the grand jury the option of charging any of the police officers for her death. Without the release of the grand jury testimony, we don’t know what options they were given.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If circumstances really were exactly as described, then most people will understand how her death could have been construed as accidental. Trust in that department is so low, however, that few believe them; if they don’t release everything they can, then count me among them. Full transparency is essential in cases like this; basically a miniature truth and reconciliation commission.
Remember when body cams were supposed to fix most of what ailed policing? The guys that shot and killed Breonna turned theirs off before the raid. Why is that? How do you trust those kind of actions?
Entrenched, endemic and systematic racism - and the inability of millions of people to see it (“You’ve really drunk the Kool-Aid,” says Donald Trump on white privilege, providing the most precise example of white privilege ever demonstrated) - these factors are doomed to turn every local tragedy into a national disaster until something seismic, like a truth and reconciliation panel, happens in America.
We continue to disgrace ourselves in the eyes of the world.
Background.
State Rep. Attica Scott was arrested and charged Thursday evening with first-degree rioting, a felony, and two misdemeanor counts: unlawful assembly and failure to disperse. The Black lawmaker on Friday called the charges “ludicrous” and said those arrested were “traumatized” by Louisville police.
This is so messed up. They’re going to charge anyone they catch because someone, in the city was committing vandalism?
Someone this week, I forget who, said “who was there during the Grand Jury proceedings for Breonna Taylor?”
Is there evidence beyond the one witness out of 13 that police announced their presence? How about the precedent that black people in their own home are now not going to be allowed to defend themselves? That if the reason that the AG can’t/won’t charge the officers because of Walker, then why is he not being charged? By not charging Walker then the police remove the easiest way to get information from the police by way of discovery.
I strongly and vehemently deny Camron’s explanation that is a nothing but a tragedy. The events that the police orchestrated in the way that they went about the getting a no knock search warrant, the timing of the execution of the search warrant, all point to a high probability that this could happen.
And I am certainly not convinced that the forensics couldn’t id which officer’s gun shot Breonna Taylor.
I would ask if they’ll ever learn, but the question would be rhetorical. Again.
[“When I put that hat on, I’m a good person, when I don’t, I’m a bad person in their eyes,” Ward said, and to him that means Black people must constantly prove their worth.]
As a frequent wearer of ball caps, i often select a hat by which team is playing or which group i want to be associated with. But never in my white privileged life has the cap I wear determined my value as a person / american.
This is a symptom of the disease of racism.
Everyone agrees Breonna was innocent and everyone agrees that she’s dead. Usually when that’s the value set at hand something is done about it. Everyone also agrees she was Black so nothing will.
The fact they’re concealing the proceeding that led to the mess speaks as loud as any words they could utter.
Here is the only evidence we needed:
Obviously civilians exercising their 1st amendment rights to gather and protest should be held to the highest of standards in terms of conduct and should be vigorously prosecuted in mass for any failures. After all it isn’t like they are trained agents of the state empowered with the states authority to administer force and thus deserving of the highest benefit of the doubt at all times and at least a dozen free passes on misconduct before being given a slap on the wrist.
Reading where the one witness who claimed the police ID’ed themselves changed his initial testimony where he said that he didn’t hear them.
The judicial system is fucked up.