Why are Black women reeling over Breonna Taylor?
Breonna Taylor was killed in her own bed as police executed a no-knock warrant. 11 witnesses confirmed police did not announce themselves, as was legally required. The sole witness claiming otherwise changed his official statement from an earlier denial. Breonna’s boyfriend heard intruders and fired a warning shot using a legally registered gun. Ballistics evidence suggests the police narrative, self-defense, is false.
The grand jury did not indict the police who killed Breonna Taylor, except for recklessness in shooting at the neighbors. Kentucky’s Attorney General’s statements suggest he may have misled the grand jury with respect to the warrant and the use of deadly force, including the conflicting ballistics reports and the inconsistent witness statements. A grand jury must evaluate evidence and decide whether to formally accuse someone of committing a crime. In this case, It appears the grand jury received a partial narrative to prevent indictment of the officers. Even so, the verdict was inconsistent. “Recklessly” firing shots at the neighbors eliminates the possibility of acting lawfully and deliberately in killing a sleeping Black woman. Bifurcating the shots *not* fired toward Breonna and her boyfriend from the impropriety suggests this wasn’t somehow a coordinated police action. Yet it was.
Black women are erased as missing persons, as domestic violence and sexual assault victims, and more. Black women are asking, What would it look like to see Black women as deserving of protection?
It’s hard to swallow… a complete disregard for a life, a family, a community
Is public safety about property or people?
Protection of Black life has not been a state priority. Historically, the police protected property; American policing began with violent, unregulated patrolling of Black bodies, defined as property during enslavement. The indictment of a shooting into neighbors’ drywall, but not Breonna Taylor’s sleeping body, asks whether the law protects property or people. Kentucky’s, limiting the relevant time frame of police misconduct to only when police aimed away from Breonna, also erases how the entire endeavor was conducted recklessly, from securing the warrant to the use of force. Yet, Kentucky defends police misconduct that stole Breonna Taylor’s life and made her last moments of terrifying.
Systems operate as designed
Some point to the existence of a legal warrant. Yet, every aspect of obtaining and executing the no-knock warrant shows carelessness toward Black life. The knowing nod with which a judge authorizes a nighttime, no-knock warrant disregards the terror of night raids on your home. It also fails to interrogate key facts: the alleged target was already in jail, the postal service denied relevant packages went there, Breonna was a paramedic with a regular schedule, and more. Legal gun possession is not unusual in Kentucky, but the police failed to mitigate foreseeable risk of the very events that occurred. There is a reason that Dylan Roof comes up every time a Black person is killed in the course of police investigations. Have we normalized violence toward Black people and licensed legalized acts of racial terror?
Profound lack of social protection + rejection of the value of Black life
We don’t talk about human rights much, but it is the role of the state to provide social protection, due process, to ensure our right to life. It is our right to be free from extrajudicial assassination. Yet, Black people never have been.
This is not a problem solved by an election. It is a problem that requires us to recognize the patterns or extraction and exploitation and systemic racism that normalizes the theft of Black life and Black potential. It is understanding a through line of presumed disposability that has been documented as genocidal to Black communities.