Breonna Taylor protesters keep needed light on screw-ups, cover-ups and white supremacy
Last Thursday, police arrested state Rep. Attica Scott, her daughter and a friend as they made their way along Fourth Street to a church to get inside before Louisville’s 9 p.m. curfew amidst Breonna Taylor protests. They were charged, however, with felony rioting because they were apparently near someone who broke a window and threw a flare inside the Louisville Free Public Library.
Scott, who’s been a steady presence at the ongoing protests for justice for Taylor, was out that night because of protests against the grand jury decision to charge only one officer, Brett Hankison, with wanton endangerment, for firing into several other apartments, not for killing Taylor. The other two officers, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove were not charged.
Although Scott is a long-time supporter of Louisville’s libraries, an elected official, and had video of her group peacefully marching toward the church, authorities have not yet dropped these absurd charges.
“They’re claiming that my daughter and I are guilty by association because we were close to that incident,” Scott told me Thursday, “but it’s interesting that Mattingly and Cosgrove are not guilty by association. None of the excuses that (Mayor Greg) Fisher or the police chief are making any sense to me.”
Trumping up charges against Scott and 24 others is a special kind of retaliation against protesters in one of the longest ongoing protests against police brutality. Those protesters have kept the heat on Louisville authorities as they have screwed up and covered up over and over again.
From the view an hour away, that’s how the saga of Breonna Taylor appears, a parade of missteps and corruption by those in charge. On Thursday alone the Courier Journal (which has done an exemplary job of covering every twist and turn), reported that 1) the paper was suing the LMPD again for not responding to an open records request in May and 2) the judge who issued the initial warrant thinks police may have lied to her about money or drugs being routed through her home. That means police should never have gone to Taylor’s house in the first place.
From the turned-off body cameras, no ambulance at the scene, to the leaked report from police that tried to smear Breonna for dating a drug dealer, to the only witness out of a dozen others who said he heard police announce himself, but had changed his initial story, to the militarized police response to protesters tired of Black people continually dying at the hands of police, the whole sad saga reflects poorly on every level of leadership in Louisville. Even Congressman John Yarmuth wrote a column titled “The LMPD — the institution and its culture — is corrupt,” citing what appears to be a constant attempt to cover up this most egregious of offenses.
The revelation this week that Attorney General Daniel Cameron — whose only coherent campaign pledge was his fealty to law enforcement— didn’t actually brief grand jurors on all the evidence or charges the jury could pursue, could hardly be a surprise. Then, compelled by a lawsuit, he released live recordings of the grand jury, but juror deliberations and prosecutor recommendations and statements were not recorded “because they are not evidence.”
Everyone is just covering their tracks and hoping it will all go away.
But protesters are not going away, and they’ve kept alive the most central truth of this case: It never would have happened if Breonna Taylor were white and lived in a white neighborhood. From my inbox, it appears many of you believe that she deserved to die for dating a drug dealer once in her life. This is how white supremacy works, the general assumption that the police are good and black people are bad. Can you imagine police rolling up to Chevy Chase at midnight to break into a white woman’s house because she once dated a doctor who handed out opioid prescriptions like candy? Don’t be silly.
The only bright spot is a grand juror who pushed back, and sued to have Cameron release the transcripts of what he showed the grand jury, whether he was trying to represent Taylor’s interests or only that of police.
The bravery of that grand juror, who was told they should keep everything secret, is what is keeping protesters like Scott from despair. When the whole truth comes out, real change can happen.
“That gives me continued hope and humanity,” Scott said, “the fact that with the truth, we will see justice in some form or fashion for Breonna and for her family and for her community.”
