Anger erupted on Wednesday, after a grand jury opted not to bring charges against the cop responsible for the killing of Breonna Taylor. The move prompted Ms Taylor’s family lawyer to call the grand jury proceedings a “sham”.
Ms Taylor, a 26-year old black hospital worker, was shot six times and killed when police raided her home on 13 March. Now, prosecutors in Kentucky have said that the officers who killed her were justified in using force to protect themselves.
According to the BBC, The individual indicted in the Taylor case is Brett Hankison, who was fired from the police force in June. Rather than being held accountable for killing Ms Taylor, he faces three counts of “wanton endangerment in the first degree”.
“Wanton endangerment”, under Kentucky law, refers to an act which demonstrates “extreme indifference to the value of human life”. It is the lowest-level felony, carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each count.
According to BBC, A judge had originally granted a so called “no-knock warrant” to the officers to search Ms Taylor’s home because investigators suspected that her ex-boyfriend was using her address to receive packages involved with illegal drug deals. Her boyfriend fired one shot as the police entered, believing them to be an intruder, as they entered without announcing themselves as police. Ms Taylor, however, had no previous criminal record.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said ballistics reports had found that six bullets had hit Ms Taylor, but only one had been fatal. The fatal bullet, it concluded, had been fired by Detective Myles Cosgrove. The attorney general added it was unclear whether Mr Hankison’s shots had also hit Ms Taylor, but they were confirmed to have hit a neighbouring apartment. It was these bullets, and not the fatal bullet that struck Ms Taylor, for which Mr Hankinson was indicted.
Ms Taylors family has called for all the officers involved to be arrested, but the grand jury has declined this request. Their family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, has released a tweet in response:
“The grand jury proceedings were a SHAM. The ‘wanton endangerment’ charge is an example of America’s 2 justice systems - protecting white neighbours & ignoring the death of a black woman.”
“We’ve been saying ‘Say Her Name’ for six months… and #BreonnaTaylor’s name was NEVER mentioned in yesterday’s indictment,” he added.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Crump wrote that “Every time justice is denied to a Black person in the United States, it seems the devil is in the details…And then it happens again. And again. So predictably. And then we have no choice but to conclude that the devil is in a divided system of justice, not in the details of any one case”.
“exorcising the devil in our criminal justice system is essential to our survival as a republic”, he concluded. “Now that the world knows Bre’s name, we won’t stop saying it until it becomes a kind of incantation to bind the devil in our divided justice system.”
Protests in Louisville since Taylor’s death in March have been taking place for more than 100 consecutive days.
According to the Guardian, the response to the grand jury’s decisions has deepened the state of chaos in which Louisville was already intrenched. Louisville was placed under a state of emergency on Tuesday in anticipation of the decision, and most city administrative buildings and other businesses were boarded up.
When asked about the charges, US President Donald Trump said he “thought it was really brilliant”. He then went on to praise Kentucky’s attorney general for “doing a fantastic job”.
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