Part I: We must STILL fight for Breonna Taylor, and the countless others who came before her
This is Part I of my series titled “We Must Still Fight For Breonna Taylor.” On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was killed by three officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department. The officers were executing a no-knock warrant as part of a drug investigation. This five-part series is intended to shed light on several systemic issues that led to her tragedy. It’s more than just arresting the cops, although this series will also discuss law enforcement accountability. We must still fight for Breonna Taylor, the countless others who came before her and nationwide reform to the systemic issues that fuel these tragedies.
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My grandfather gave me a 2020 calendar to hang up in my office earlier this year.
Not for decor, but for knowledge. It’s the same calendar that Rick Carlisle, a head coach in the NBA, has been reading from to start his media sessions. The calendar — which was published by the Equal Justice Initiative and costs just $2.00 — doesn’t just display which day and month it is, but sheds light on racial issues and historic events that happened on a given day in America.
When it flipped to March, the calendar recalled a 2015 incident when several police officers were fired for horrifying racial slurs. Text messages like “white power” and “All nig — rs must f — king hang” and “nig — rs should be sprayed” came from members of the San Francisco Police Department, uncovered on March 13, 2015.
It was blatant racism.
Next year’s calendar will unfortunately feature a new event for March 13, 2020, the day an innocent Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville police officers who stormed into her apartment as part of a failed drug raid.
It was the result of systemic racism.
Narcotics raids have been a pervasive problem in America since the rise of the War on Drugs. In an effort to get more political votes, the Nixon administration began to tether drug addictions to crime instead of therapy. It was an element of his “Southern Strategy.” Forcefully entering people’s homes for drugs became a part of that strategy during the presidency of Reagan, who took a more militaristic approach in the ’80s and declared drugs a threat to “national security.”
Ever since then, the Black community has been the most impacted in drug raids while accountability in law enforcement has typically been scant when things go wrong. I’ll dive deeper into the systematic problems in parts three, four and five of my “We Must Still Fight For Breonna Taylor” series.
Meanwhile, I want to shed more light on the Black woman who I feel was the Breonna Taylor before social media hashtags became ubiquitous.
The purpose of revisiting her story is to not only put emphasis on another mistreated Black woman, but to also reinforce this point: When we fight for Breonna Taylor, we are also fighting for an innumerable amount of others who have suffered the same fate.
The Southside of Lima, Ohio — a small city with a significant African-American population — lost one of its residents to police gunfire on the night of January 4, 2008.
Her name: Tarika Wilson. She was 26 years old. She was inside her home. She caused no harm. She was murdered by police during a drug raid. (Replace this paragraph with Breonna Taylor, and everything would have still aligned.)
Police were looking to make an arrest for Tarika’s boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer. As SWAT officers broke down the front door and entered the home, Tarika sheltered in a bedroom with her six young children. A white officer went upstairs and blindly opened fire into the room.
Without identifying a target, he shot and killed Tarika as she was holding her 14-month-old son. The infant boy was shot in the arm and shoulder; he survived and later had his finger amputated. His mom never got the justice she deserved. The officer testified that the reason he opened fire was because he heard gunshots that he thought were hostile. The gunfire he heard actually came from downstairs as another officer was shooting the dogs inside the home.
He was charged of negligent homicide and negligent assault, but acquitted by an all-white jury.
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Let’s pause and paint this picture.
Your local shooting range likely has a sign on the wall that lists a large amount of gun safety rules. The regulations at my range are even posted on their website. It reads: Always treat guns like they are loaded. Never try to catch a falling handgun. Always keep your finger off the trigger until it’s time to shoot.
Common sense procedures. Basic safety principles. Here’s another one:
“All shooters must be aware of their target and what is behind it.”
Tarika was behind a door. She wasn’t the target. And the only thing the officer saw when he fired was a shadow. Before you think, “Oh, well it’s different for cops.” No, it’s not. These same rules are taught in law enforcement. When the Louisville Metro Police Department fired one of the three officers involved in the death of Breonna, it was because he shot his weapon into a closed door without identifying a target or knowing what was behind it.
His termination letter read:
“You violated Standard Operating Procedure 9.1.12 Use of Deadly Force when you used deadly force by blindly firing ten (10) rounds into Breonna Taylor’s apartment without supporting facts that your deadly force was directed at a person against whom posed an immediate threat of danger or serious injury to yourself or others. In fact the ten (10) rounds you fired were into a patio door and window which were covered with material that completely prevented you from verifying any person as an immediate threat or more importantly any innocent persons present.”
So, the only difference between civilians and cops is accountability. A badge can allow individuals to break into a house, murder an innocent woman, shoot her infant child and terrorize the barking pets without reprecussion. That same badge can allow three individuals, a dozen years later, to kill an innocent EMT worker inside her home without any real investigation taking place until two months after the shooting.
This isn’t hyperbole, just an unfathomable reality we live in. There isn’t footage of these shootings because body cameras are historically not worn or inactive during raids. As NBA superstar LeBron James put it, “is that what we need, to see a video of Breonna being killed for people to realize how bad the situation is?” For me, envisioning that fatal moment for Tarika as she was sheltering behind a door, as well as the severe trauma her six kids experienced after helplessly watching the encounter, no footage is required.
No footage is necessary when an innocent 7-year-old Black girl like Aiyana Stanley-Jones is killed while sleeping on the couch during a failed paramilitary raid. No footage is necessary when a 92-year-old Black woman like Kathryn Johnston is murdered in cold blood and handcuffed as she’s dying, right before officers began to plant drugs inside her house.
The tragedies pile up from youth to elderly.
These can’t be viewed as isolated incidents — Breonna’s death is a microcosm of a systemic problem in America.
And until there is systemic change, these problems will continue to mount, paving the way for more social injustices to be added to that calendar.
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Part II: When innocent people think burglary during a midnight drug raid
Part III: How the weakening of the Fourth Amendment has led to tragedies
Part IV: How culture has become a roadblock to reform in drug raids
Part V: How money fuels the type of raids that killed Breonna Taylor
