The Daily - The Killing of Breonna Taylor, Part 1

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

At the beginning of 2020, Breonna Taylor posted on social media that it was going to be her year. She was planning a family with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker; she had a new job and a new car. She had also blocked Jamarcus Glover, a convicted drug dealer with whom she had been romantically involved on and off since 2016, from her phone.But forces were already in motion. The Louisville Police Department was preparing raids on locations it had linked to Mr. Glover — and Ms. Taylor’s address was on the target list.In the raid that ensued, Ms. Taylor was fatally shot. Her name has since become a rallying cry for protesters. Today, in the first of two parts, we explore Ms. Taylor’s life and how law enforcement ended up at her door.Guests: Rukmini Callimachi, a correspondent for The Times, and Yoruba Richen, a documentary filmmaker, talk to Ms. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer; her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker; and her cousin, Preonia Flakes.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: The story of what happened the night Breonna Taylor was killed remains largely untold. A Times Investigation explores the path to the shooting and its consequences.

I got him. What's going on, man? What's up? You know what I'm stopping you for? I got him. Man, when you turned on here, on the Dixie. In the spring of 2019, this video started circulating online. Give me five, put your hands on the steering wheel.

It showed the police in the city of Louisville in Kentucky making a traffic stop. The driver was a black teenage boy. He happened to be his high school's homecoming king and a multiple scholarship winner. You don't have any weapons on you, do you? I don't. No drugs? Nope. He had borrowed his mom's car to go buy a slushie at the local store.

Turn around with your hands and talk to him. Spread your feet. I don't, I didn't even do anything. And he suddenly found himself being pulled out of the car, Put your hands on your back real quick. being handcuffed, You're not going to run your back into the car. being searched,

Quit doing the clenching your fist thing. for the offense of making a wide turn. And this video that went viral online was far from the first time that something like this had happened in Louisville. There's a call now for a review of Metro Police policy's claims of racial profiling on the part of the white police officer. So in response, the Louisville Police Department enacted a series of reforms. These changes are meant to reflect our department's values and commitment to fair professional interactions with the public. We have work to do in terms of building trust and legitimacy with the people that we have sworn to serve and protect. And yet, those very reforms

set into motion a raid that a few months later killed a 26-year-old woman. We want justice! We want justice! We want justice! Justice for whom? Her name was Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor! I can't hear you! Justice for whom? Breonna Taylor! Justice for whom?

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor. Over the past five months. Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor. Over the past five months. Breonna Taylor. The name Breonna Taylor has become a national rallying cry

for those demanding changes in American policing. Arrest the cops! Arrest the cops! The killers of Breonna Taylor. Protests and celebrities speaking out. We feel for it and we want justice. Say her name, Breonna Taylor. Beyonce is demanding justice for Breonna Taylor.

Breonna, Breonna. But unlike George Floyd, Eric Garner, or Rayshard Brooks, there's no video capturing the final moments of her life. Do you know Breonna Taylor's story, her whole story? Today, a Times investigation pieces together what actually happened to Breonna Taylor. In part one, Rukmini Kalamaki tells the story of how police ended up at her door. It's Wednesday, September 9th. All right, let's get started, okay? Rukmini, where does your reporting start for this story?

So I met my colleague, the documentary filmmaker Yoruba Ritchin in Louisville. So can you start off by telling me your names and what your relation is to Breonna? And we spent the next couple of weeks speaking to the people who knew Breonna best. My name's Tamika Palmer. I have two daughters. Her mom. Breonna Taylor, Janiyah Palmer. My name is Kenneth Walker. Her boyfriend.

My name is Priyana Flakes, and I am Breonna's cousin. Her cousins. I would say our relationship was more like sisters, twin cousins, pre and bur. Her very best friends, going all the way back to her childhood, her co-workers. And in combination with the thousands of pages of documents that I was able to acquire about her case, what comes across is that this is a young woman who was dealt, I would say, a pretty tough hand in life.

What was your reaction when you found out you were pregnant? How old were you? I was, like, in disbelief. I was 16 years old, though, so... She was born to a teenage mom. I just knew I had to be a better person then, at that point. So I took it on. Her dad was convicted on a murder and drug charge

when she was just six years old and was sent to prison for the rest of her life. What was she like as a child? Brianna was a good kid. She was easy. Even just as a young kid, she just was, she was smart. But what you also see amidst the challenges of her early life is the person who was trying to push beyond the limitations of her circumstances. She was one of those people, she made a plan and she went. That was it. Like, it has to be done this way.

And I'm like, okay. Just seeing how she was wanting to be successful, she kind of like drove that into my head. Like, this is what we're going to do. This is how you're going to do. This is how you're going to do it. And I'm going to show you how to do it. We spoke to one of her oldest friends who said that her mom, when they were children, would not let her go to sleepovers at all, except if the sleepover was at Brianna's house. Why? Because Brianna was considered the responsible one. She

was the one among their little group of friends who made sure that the other girls got to school on time if there was a sleepover, who made sure that they did their homework. She seemed to be taking almost an adult role in her immediate circle. Even as a kid, I can remember her being seven years old, saying to my mother, let me check your blood sugar. saying to my mother, let me check your blood sugar. When she was very young, she started to show an interest in medicine and in health care and in helping other people. Her mom describes how when Brianna learned that her grandmother had an insulin problem, she wanted to prick her grandmother's finger with a needle and draw blood so that she could test her blood sugar level.

She thought that was interesting, and she kept on asking her grandmother if she could do that. Like, leave her alone. But my mother would let her stick her finger in, and she was so pumped up to do it and help her do her insulin. I'm like, oh, my God. We see that in ninth grade, she begged her mom to give her permission to take the bus and to go start working at a local fast food joint after school. Her friends say that they never really knew her without a job. She taught me stuff my own people, my own siblings, my own mother didn't teach me. The family I came from, really not supportive. So I used to make little Facebook statuses like, who's going to come to my graduation if I had it, even though I know y'all

don't really mess with me. Bree would be like, don't worry about them. And as long as I'm by your side, that's all that matters, because I'm going to be there. Brianna is the first person in her family to graduate from high school, and she then goes to college. Tell me how you met. We met, I guess, on Twitter. I guess on Twitter. In college, she starts a banter on Twitter with another college student. Kind of like flirting on the timeline, I guess, so to say.

His name was Kenneth Walker. He went by Kenny to all of his friends. And she went to University of Kentucky and I went to Western Kentucky. And they start a sort of emoji-filled, flirtatious Twitter banter that by 2016 evolved into the beginnings of a romance and of a relationship. I kept on telling her I don't want to be friends no more. But we can be if we have to be, but I don't want to be. It was an on-again, off-again relationship. But what's clear in this back and forth is that Kenny seemed to really have identified her as the person that he wanted to be his life partner. Seems like when nobody else was there for me, she was always there. And it was Brianna that wasn't 100% sure about him. Some days it was, yeah, let's marry and have a kid. And then other days it's like, no, let's be single and live kid-free lives. So there was a million times where I say,

I'm not messing with her anymore ever again. And I'm sure she said the same thing several times. But everybody we spoke to described him as somebody who genuinely loved her. We can be friends and we can be everything else too. That's the goal when you're trying to be with somebody or love them, whatever, you want to be friends with them also. And that's rare. So if you come across that, I think you should try to take advantage of it. What we now know is that a few months after she started dating Kenny in 2016, she also starts seeing another man. His name is Jarmarcus Clover.

And by all accounts, he's in many ways the opposite of Kenny. Jarmarcus is a twice convicted drug dealer. He was sentenced in 2008 when he was 18 years old in Mississippi, his home state, for drug trafficking. And later in 2014, he moves to Kentucky. He's charged again for drug possession. And he would spend the next several years in and out of jail. And it bears noting that he seems to enter her life at what was ostensibly a low point. She had started college, but she dropped out because she felt homesick and was really missing her family. She got her EMT certification and began working as a first responder,

riding ambulances. But a year into that job, she quit. On social media, she says that she was discouraged by the 16-hour shifts and by the low pay. And pretty soon into her relationship with DeMarcus, his problems become her problems. And this is the first time that you see the police coming and knocking on the at 3003 Springfield Drive. Priyana? Is this your place? Yes. And they came because of a favor that she had done for him.

Okay. So, what's your name, young lady? Jamarcus. What's that? Jamarcus. Jamarcus, what's your last name? Glover. Glover? So what's your last name? Glover. Glover.

So what happened is she had rented a car. Her own car was apparently in the shop. So she had rented a car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Jamarcus Glover asked her for the keys. She handed over the keys. He then handed them to a third person, a man. And a couple of hours later, that person was found dead, slumped over the wheel of the car. His body was riddled with bullets and on the floorboard of the car and in the console,

they found several baggies of drugs. What I need to know is what's going on with the rental car and the person that was in that car. I don't know who was in the car. She let me use the car. I don't know who was in the car. She let me use the car. They get home and that's how it went. The person that ends up dead at the wheel of the car is a man that's known to them only by his nickname Rambo. And in fact, he's the brother of one of Jamarcus Glover's associates,

a member of what turns out to be a criminal drug syndicate. And that man had gone to jail on multiple occasions with Tremarcus. Are you all into the gang? Oh, no. I mean, come on now. I mean, I was. Right, that's what I'm saying. Let's just be honest right here, okay?

I was. They ain't got nothing to do with the gang. I'm not saying gang. I said the gang. Are you working? How did he make his money? How do you make your money? Oh, no, no. I ain't. No, I have not been in the street before. Are you working now?

No. Where you work at? I don't work right now. I just left my job over the weekend. Where were you at? MS Louisville Metro. What were you doing for them? EMT. I saw the police notes and they concluded that Rihanna really had no foreknowledge of how this car was going to be used and that DeMarcus also did not appear to be aware that this man was going to get killed. All right, man. Hey. Hey. Take care of yourself, all right? See you later, lady.

Be careful, all right? We'll be right back. Rukmini, when you talked to Brianna's family and her friends, did Jamarcus come up and what did they say about him? You know, this was really hard to get at because when we spoke to her mother, her cousins, her best friends, you ask about Jamarcus Glover and either they stop making eye contact with you or they say to you that they don't want to talk about him or they say to you that they don't know him. And this relationship is something

that we have essentially uncovered through documents. This was clearly something that those who love her did not want to talk about. The closest I got was one of her oldest childhood friends, somebody who's known her since she was in elementary school. And all she would say to me was, I didn't like him regarding Jamarcus. But what we see in the documents that we've amassed is that in the next four years, she was on again and off again with Kenny and with Jamarcus. And in the periods that she's with Jamarcus, he repeatedly entangles her in his

problems and in his run-ins and dealings with police. This is a man who is in and out of jail, and he asks her to pay his bail twice in 2017. And then later in 2019, you see her paying bail for another man, another accused drug dealer, who was a friend of DeMarcus's and who was believed to be part of this criminal syndicate alongside him. That same year, 2019, that's the year that the video of the homecoming king getting pulled over by Louisville police goes viral. And when he gets pulled over for the infraction of making a wide turn, things very quickly escalate. He's pulled out of his car by the white police officer. He's on the phone with his mom and the cops begin searching

his car for drugs. Ma'am, please stay over here. His mom eventually shows up. Stay over there, please. If you approach my traffic stop, I will take you. Ma'am, if you approach my traffic stop, I will take you to jail. And in the conversation that ensues, another officer begins to explain to the mom the larger strategy of what they're trying to do with these traffic stops. What they would do is they would identify an area that had a high crime rate. And then they would flood that area with police officers who would pull people over for minor offenses, for turning without signaling, for having a broken taillight, for making a wide turn. And once the people were pulled over, they would search their cars for drugs or for other contraband and essentially look for evidence of more serious offenses. I appreciate y'all being out here for violent crimes. My son's not violent, nothing.

No one said he was a violent crime. No one said he was. Can you tell me how to pick out violent crimes? As a result, it created a lot of badwill between the city's police department and the city's black population. Black people who were just going about their daily lives were getting pulled over and aggressively searched when they were doing nothing more than, like the teenage boy in the viral video, going to the store to get a slushie in his mom's car. All right, sir, here's your ID back. You've got court October 2nd for improper turning at 7 p.m. Do you understand the reason why you stopped? All right, have a wonderful day. So it just so happened that the week that the video of the homecoming king went viral, that week coincided with a visit to the department of a policing expert named Robin Engel.

She's a professor at the University of Cincinnati, and she has been promoting a different approach to policing that has actually really been successful and borne fruit in a couple of communities, including Cincinnati and Las Vegas. When the video caused the uproar that it caused, the police chief pulled her aside in a conference room and said to her, how can we do better? And what was her answer? Her answer was, instead of flooding a large area with police, you go hyper-focused and you look at a micro location that has been the locus of repeat crime. A storefront, an abandoned warehouse, a city block, an apartment building. And you ask yourself, what is it about that specific location? What are the parameters

of that location that are making it conducive to repeat crime? And then once you identify that place, you begin putting a lot of police resources into monitoring that microlocation. And she told him about how this method of policing had dramatically reduced violent crime as much as 70 to 80 percent in one particular neighborhood in Cincinnati. So when the police chief hears about this, he naturally got excited. And by December of last year, the police department had created its own squad that was going to target crime through this new method. So the next thing that happens is they identify the area of the city that has the highest crime, and they end up honing in on a street called Elliott Avenue, the 2400 block of Elliott Avenue, basically one city block.

So it was on this block that they erected a pole camera in January. What they saw is that within an hour of erecting the camera on January 2nd, between 15 and 20 cars had stopped in front of 2424 Elliott Avenue. 2424 Elliott Avenue was one of four trap houses or drug houses that were being operated by Jamarcus Glover. And this is how Jamarcus basically ends up in the crosshairs of this new squad that was created for the purpose of reforming police conduct in the city. That same day, this is January 2nd, in addition to seeing the 15 to 20 cars that stopped in front of this house,

these are presumably customers who are coming and going, buying drugs, they see between 5 and 6 p.m. that evening a Chevrolet Impala pull up. They run the plates, and they learn that that car is registered to Breonna Taylor. Hello, this is a free call from... The next day, the 3rd of January.

An inmate at... Louisville Metropolitan Corrections Department. DeMarcus Glover is arrested, and he makes a series of recorded phone calls to Breonna Taylor from jail. In one of those recorded calls, you hear Jamarcus Glover asking her to arrange his bail by contacting another associate of his. He said he was already back at the trap and then I talked to him again just a minute ago to see if he had contact, you know. They couldn't post a bond until one. Yeah, I'm waiting now.

And in these calls... Yeah. Mm. I'm just waiting here. I think I'm about to be sick. I feel like I got hit by a bus. I can't get me some rest in your bed. You can sense the intimacy between them. I'm leaving. I ain't had no rest like none. Yeah, I know.

I ain't really been sleeping for really long. I keep waking up every other hour type shit. Huh? When you around, I stress a lot. Huh? When you around, I stress more. Yeah. Why? Because I just always be worried

about you. I love you. I'm going to call and try to make sure this shit been fun. I woke up, I just called. Okay. I love you too. I love you. I'll call you back and let you know. Okay. I love you too. I love you too. I'll call you back and let you know.

Okay. So DeMarcus gets bailed out, and in the course of the next two months, this newly created squad continues to surveil the trap house at the 2400 block of Elliott. They end up putting a GPS on DeMarcus' car, and that GPS shows that he makes repeated trips in January between the trap house and Breonna Taylor's apartment. They also send police to watch her apartment, and on one day in mid-January, they photograph DeMarcus going into her apartment and emerging from it with a package in his hands and then driving straight back to the trap house. On another

occasion in February, they film her and him arriving in the same car at the trap house. On another occasion in February, they film her and him arriving in the same car at the trap house. He is seen getting out of the driver's side door. She's seen getting out of the passenger side door. He goes into the trap house. He comes back out and they drive away together. But the thing that the police had missed as they were carrying out this intense surveillance was the new arc of Breonna Taylor's life that had been building for some time. This message is from January. It says, this year I'm coming for everything. She said, I'm speaking it into existence.

And she sent two emojis with the fingers crossed and hearts. She was coming for everything she wanted this year. 2020 was her year. After leaving her job as an EMT, she got back on her feet and she got a job as an emergency room technician. She picked up a second shift and she was now working basically two jobs at this ER and at another hospital. And you see that her life, according to her social media posts, is really on this positive trajectory. She's bought herself a new car. She's going to save up for a home. And crucially, in mid-February, she appears to break up for good with Jamarcus Glover.

And the reason I say for good is there's evidence that's come out since then that indicates that she actually blocked him on her cell Oh. And from what we know... Everything was, like, really good. It was great. She seems to commit to Kenny. There was a whole lot of marriage talk and baby talk. We even had baby names and everything. Kenbury, just for the record, that was the girl name.

It's Kenny and remix. I like that. So they're very much launched on what looks to be a serious relationship. But even as these sweeping changes are occurring in Breonna Taylor's life, the police are barreling forward on their investigation. Mm-hmm. police are barreling forward on their investigation. And they believe by March that they have enough evidence to hit five locations that are crucial to DeMarcus Glover's criminal syndicate. Four of them are on Elliott Avenue and around Elliott Avenue. These are the trap houses that he operated. And the fifth is the home of Breonna Taylor.

Tomorrow on The Daily, what happened during the police raid? We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The chief of police in Rochester, New York, resigned on Tuesday amid growing outrage and widening investigations into the death of Daniel Prude by officers in his department. Prude suffocated after police placed a hood over his head and pressed him into the ground for two minutes, a death that Rochester officials did not disclose for months. The police chief, Laurent Singletary, has denied that the officers involved did anything wrong. And... It's an unprecedented moment.

It's an historic pledge. Nine vaccine makers are coming out saying that they will stand with science. In an unusual public pledge, the CEOs of nine drug companies, including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, said that they would not distribute a vaccine for the coronavirus until it had been thoroughly vetted for safety and effectiveness. With increasing public concerns about the processes that we are using to develop these vaccines, and even more importantly,

the processes that will be used to evaluate these vaccines, we saw it as critical to come out and reiterate our commitment that we will develop our products, our vaccines, using the highest ethical standards. The statement appeared to be

a response to claims by President Trump that a vaccine would be ready before Election Day, raising fears that the president may rush the process and undermine public trust in an eventual vaccine. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.