KY Supreme Court just made life more dangerous for people of color and police | Opinion

In July 2021, after a contentious and long-fought battle that involved thousands of hours of researching, organizing, letter-writing, calling, and showing up to council meetings, a very diverse group of hundreds of people managed to convince LFUCG council to pass a ban on no-knock warrants here in Fayette County.

Almost immediately on the heels of that council decision, the Lexington Police Department’s (LPD) union, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Bluegrass Lodge #4, filed a lawsuit to have that work—which represented the will of the people—overturned.

On Sept. 18, the poisoned fruit of that lawsuit finally dropped when the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down Lexington’s no-Knock warrant ban.

During the fight to ban no-knocks in Fayette County—and it was an ugly fight that saw the FOP doxx protestors and organizers and even harass councilmembers online — the stakes could not have been more clear: Just the year before, Breonna Taylor had been murdered by LMPD police officers during the execution of a no-knock warrant.

So here’s the thing that should be obvious — especially to those of us here in Kentucky where Ms. Taylor was killed and where we went over the data on the efficacy and safety of no-knock warrants ad nauseam: no-knock warrants are dangerous. They are not dangerous sometimes. They are not dangerous when or if. They are dangerous all the time. Every time. They are also almost always sought and executed against people of color.

Every year U.S. residents, including children, are injured and killed by police in no-knock warrant raids. Here in Lexington prior to the ban, LPD officers executing a no-knock warrant broke down the front door of a house that was not the house listed on the warrant. They handcuffed the homeowner in front of his children before they realized their mistake. Had the homeowner been armed, he and his family and some of our officers could have been killed. Kentucky, after all, is a Stand-Your-Ground state, and a whole bunch of us are armed to the teeth, and there is literally no way to tell the police from an intruder when they break into your home unannounced.

Which is why no-knock warrants don’t go well for police officers either. When fatalities occur during standard knock and announce warrants, police officers represent 10% of those fatalities. When fatalities occur during no-knock warrants, police officers represent 20% of fatalities. In other words, when a fatality occurs during the execution of a warrant, police are twice as likely to be the ones killed when that warrant is of the no-knock variety.

So why in the world would our local police union work so hard to re-impose something that puts them and us in greater danger?

Two reasons: power and a deep disdain for anyone — especially the public they are contractually obligated to protect and serve — telling them what to do. If there is one thing we can count on in regards to policing in Lexington and throughout the country as a whole, it’s that the police want to do whatever they want with no questions asked or transparency given—damn what’s safe. Damn, even, what works.

Here’s the thing: The little we know—from the bad no-knock warrant executed here in Lexington to Breonna Taylor and Amir Locke to this Courier-Journal article on criminal Kentucky sheriffs to the long-running serial rapist-protecting racket perpetrated by cops in Johnson City, Tenn. — is more than enough to compel many of us to seek to limit policing’s harm. We, the people, were right to work to get the no-knock ban passed. Our elected officials who voted for the ban were right to pass it in an effort to keep us—especially Lexingtonians of color—a little safer.

Shame on the Kentucky Supreme Court. Shame on the FOP. Shame on LPD. Our work made you safer, too.

Reva Russell English is an organizer, farmer and artist in Lexington.