Now that more and more information is coming out in the Breonna Taylor killing by Louisville police, it becomes more and more obvious that this was, at the very best, a horrible tragedy, and at the worst, a case of overzealous law enforcement mishandling a warrant and causing a storm of gunfire that killed an innocent woman and could have killed many, many more.
People are raising questions about the no-knock warrant, and about the firing of twenty (!) shots into the apartment and into surrounding apartments, and about the fact that the person they were looking for was already in custody. More questions are being raised about why the family of Breonna Taylor still doesn’t have any answers as to what happened. And of course, there’s the fact that the man in the apartment fired first because of the no-knock, bust-the-door-down approach of the police, thinking they were being robbed.
But, I don’t want to address any of that; others are already doing so. Instead, I want to raise two simple questions to LMPD and to Mayor Fischer:
- What possible reason is there for the investigation of Breonna Taylor’s killing to still be “ongoing” after two months?
- And, if there hadn’t suddenly been national scrutiny raining down on you, would the investigation still be ongoing years from now?
On the first question, let me clear: If this had happened to a person of prominence in this town — especially a WHITE person of prominence — the investigation would have been finished in two DAYS, instead of “still ongoing” after two MONTHS.
Can you imagine if police had killed, say, a local television personality in a needless execution of a warrant? Or the son or daughter of a local bank president? Or, for that matter, almost any East End teenager? We would have had press conferences, and statements, and a quick investigation, and the police chief and the mayor would have been in front of the cameras in a few days, at the very least explaining what happened and why.
But because it’s a young black woman, and because the warrant was about drugs, most people just move past the story, assuming whatever they assume about black people and drugs. And the story fades from public consciousness.
Which leads me to my second question: What would have happened to this case, and to these officers, and to LMPD, if Shaun King hadn’t thrown a national spotlight on the killing?
I am not one to assume all police killings of persons of color is race-driven. Police have a tough job, they have to make split-second decision, and not all police are racist. (Although some certainly are.) I get all that.
However, the delay in the investigation certainly feels like either a case of “just another black person dead at the hands of police” episode, that doesn’t seem important to the people in charge; or, a case of “wow, we messed up, let’s hope no one pays attention.”
In either case, it seems obvious that the department and city only got around to doing something about this because their hand was forced by the outside publicity. And that is its own form of white privilege.
At this point, pretty much the only statement either LMPD or Mayor Fischer can make is “we messed up, here’s how we messed up, and here’s what we’re going to do about it.”
And anything that includes the word “ongoing” is a mark of failure.
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