Breonna Taylor’s Killers Got Off — and We’re the Ones Paying for It
A taxpayer-funded settlement does not equal justice for victims of police brutality
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
So much for arresting the men who killed Breonna Taylor. Earlier today, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced that a grand jury had declined to indict two of three Louisville law enforcement officers who fired their weapons into Taylor’s apartment in March. The third, detective Brett Hankison, was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment — charges predicated not on Hankison shooting Taylor, but on his shooting into a neighboring apartment.
At the press conference, Cameron declared that the “use of force” from the two other officers present, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, had been in response to Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, opening fire after his door was being broken down in the middle of the night. As such, neither were criminally charged. (Hankison was fired by LMPD in June.)
The way the law tells it, no one killed Breonna Taylor. Her death was collateral, the act of a ghost — and in any case, only the welfare of her neighbors is of any…
