Today, Explained - Justice for Breonna Taylor

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

There hasn’t been an arrest in the case in the three months since police shot and killed Taylor in her home in Louisville, Kentucky. But now the “Justice for Breonna” movement has the potential to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. If you caught the show yesterday, you heard that Black Lives Matter is working. All across the United States, there's a racial reckoning taking place. And that means justice. Justice for George Floyd. Derek Chauvin is behind bars charged with murder. Justice for Ahmaud Arbery. This week, the three men involved in his killing were indicted. But justice has been more slow going for Breonna Taylor. She was shot to death by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky in mid-March,

but no one's been charged with anything. But that doesn't mean calls for Justice for Breonna aren't working. They might even be working in ways no one could have predicted. Believe it or not, right now, Justice for Breonna has the potential to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Today, we're talking to two local reporters from the Louisville Courier-Journal to find out how. We're going to start with Tessa Duvall. She's been covering Breonna's case. Breonna Taylor was a 26-year-old woman living in Louisville, Kentucky. She was an ER tech working at two area hospitals, and her mom described her

ambitions for the future as, you know, she wanted to be a nurse. She wanted to, you know, further her career in the medical field. She wanted to have her own family and have a house. And she said that she was, you know, a determined young woman who was going to make those things happen for her future. Brianna was amazing. I don't know anybody who didn't love Breonna. She just was a very sweet person. She loved family. She loved life. She loved to help people. How did the world come to know her name? Take us back to the night where the police entered her apartment. Breonna Taylor was at home in her Louisville apartment the night of March 12th into the early morning hours of March 13th. She was there with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. And Kenneth Walker said that he and Breonna were in bed watching a movie. It's almost 1 a.m.

They're drifting off to sleep. And that's when they start hearing a banging on the door. First thing she says, who is it? No response. So we're like, what the heck? We both get up, start putting on clothes. Another knock at the door. She's like, who is it? Loud at the top of her lungs. No response. And so they think, okay, maybe this is one of Brianna's exes. Maybe it's someone trying to rob them. Kenneth Walker says that they have no idea who's on the other side of the door. So she says that there's another knock at the door. She's yelling at the top of her lungs

and I am too at this point. Who is it? No answer, no response, no anything. Police have said from their side of the door is that they are knocking, they are announcing, they don't intend to use a battering ram to get in. They want to give her time to open the door. They're identifying themselves as police. And meanwhile, Kenneth, according to statements he's made, is inside. He fires this warning shot. And on the other side, you know, police gain entry using the battery ram. And immediately, Sergeant Mattingly, when the door comes open, is shot in the femoral artery. And so he returns fire. And what ensues over the next few minutes is three officers fire their weapons at Brianna's apartment.

At least one officer we now know was alleged to be firing from outside of the apartment through a patio door with curtains over it. So in this exchange of gunfire, if you can even really call it an exchange because Kenneth Walker says he only fired one shot, though it did strike an officer, Breonna is struck at least eight times according to a lawsuit filed by her family, and she died in the hall of her apartment. What were the police even doing there? So the night that Breonna Taylor died, police actually had five search warrants related to the same broader narcotics investigation. And essentially what they're looking for, they're looking for drugs, they're looking for guns.

They're just really trying to hone in on several individuals and this drug operation that they have going. And so, Breonna's connection to all of this, she's not a main suspect of the investigation, though she is named and her address is given on the warrant relating to her apartment. It's a common misconception that police were actually at the wrong house when Breonna died. That's not true. Her name, her address, her apartment, her social, her date of birth, we're all on that warrant. But the connection to the broader investigation is also coming under scrutiny. A detective wrote that he had observed one of the main suspects getting a package from Breonna Taylor's apartment and then driving to one of these known drug houses. He also, on the affidavit for the

search warrant, wrote that this individual used Breonna's apartment as his address on several records and found it in several databases. And he also said that the postal inspector confirmed that this individual was getting packages back in January at Brianna's apartment as well. But since then, the postal inspector has actually come out and told another news outlet in Louisville that that was actually not the case, that he did not tell this detective that. And so now the detective who obtained these five search warrants for the early morning hours of March 13th is actually also on administrative reassignment. And his connection to all of this is also being investigated by the attorney general and other law enforcement agencies that are looking into the shooting and the broader circumstances surrounding it. Who was this individual and did this ultimately have anything to do with Breonna Taylor's attorney said is that this individual who is one of the main suspects, his name is Joe Marcus Glover, Breonna Taylor's family attorney says that they dated a couple of years ago and they have maintained what he called a passive friendship. And so that's the connection between them, according to an attorney for her family. Now, we are still awaiting the full results of the investigation, but the inventory log

from the search that was conducted after the shooting at Rihanna's turned up shell casings and it turned up, you know, iPhone ID for, you know, for her, for Kenneth Walker, but there were no drugs listed on what was found in that search warrant at her apartment. So her connection, her role in all of this, it's either not fully established or it's not as strong as what police may have led us to believe. So Breonna Taylor is shot and killed by police in her apartment on March 13th, which I believe is a Friday. What happens next? What happens, say, in the next week? So anytime there's a police-involved shooting, the local police department and the police chief get out in front of local reporters and they talk about what happened.

You know, what is the condition of the officer involved? The press conference following Breonna's death was very short, very minimal. Officers knocked on the door several times and announced their presence as police who were there with a serious injury. And so, for much of March, that's the focus. When you started to see protests, you know, taking off in Minneapolis and in other cities across America, I think that that resonated in Louisville as well. So we are coming up on almost a month of daily protests in Louisville. And it is very focused on, say her name, Breonna Taylor, getting justice for

Breonna Taylor. These are the rallying cries. And of course, there's people talking about George Floyd and all these other victims of racially motivated violence and police killings. And people here have not lost sight of who Breonna's case, but have handled the ensuing protests. I believe it was the third or fourth night of protests in Louisville. The National Guard and Louisville police officers were involved in a shooting that killed another Black citizen of Louisville, David McAtee. And so you have protests over police violence. And then during those protests over police violence, the National Guard and police kill another Black American. And so the police chief, who had already announced that he was going to retire, is then fired.

This type of institutional failure will not be tolerated. Accordingly, I have relieved Steve Conrad of his duties as chief of Louisville Metro Police Department. Another big talking point in the Breonna Taylor case is, why weren't the police wearing body cameras? And so the mayor has since announced that police, anytime they are acting in their official capacity, when they're serving search warrants, they're going to be wearing body cameras. Another big thing that activists have been pushing for is why did police have a no-knock search warrant? Why are we even using no-knock search warrants on narcotics investigations? And so the mayor and police chief said,

okay, we're going to implement this new policy where any no-knocks search warrant has to be signed off by a chief. And then actually they come back and say, well, we're going to suspend no-knocks search warrants. And then Metro Council comes up with this ordinance to scale them back for only the most heinous offenses. And then for a lot of activists, that's not good enough. And so the legislation that was ultimately passed unanimously by all 26 members of Metro Council

and signed by the mayor was a total ban on no-knock search warrants for Louisville police. And leading a bipartisan effort to create Breonna's law. And whereas the Louisville Metro Council is wishing to honor the memory of Breonna Taylor so that her name will never be forgotten, hereby declares today as Breonna's law day. Say her name. Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor. And so we went from having a policy that said, okay, the police chief has to sign off to a total and complete ban in the span of about a month.

So there's been changes to police policy. What about the officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor? In the aftermath of the shooting at Breonna Taylor's apartment, we learned that three officers fired their weapons that night and they were all immediately placed on administrative reassignment, which is standard operating procedure in the wake of any shooting involving police officers. Now, one of them has actually been fired by the city. That's Officer Brett Hankison. from the interim police chief, we have been told that he is accused of firing his weapon,

quote, blindly from outside of the apartment without knowing what he was shooting at and did so for at least 10 rounds. Now, he had a termination hearing and the department ultimately decided to fire him, but he still has the opportunity to appeal that in the future. You know, there are a lot of people protesting who say that's way too long for any kind of action to be taken. And really, it all comes down to the fact that the investigation is still ongoing. So, it's frustrating to people who have seen more immediate results in places like Minneapolis and Atlanta when there are other allegations of police misconduct and police violence, that it looks like things are moving faster there. An important difference in the Breonna Taylor case is there's not video of her death. You know, we've been told that these officers, the three who fired their weapons that night, were not wearing body cameras at the time that they were serving this warrant.

I think that being able to see it directly is a big factor for a lot of these other cases that we've seen that have produced more immediate justice. But we just don't have that in this case. Standing up for Black women is standing up for humanity. It's standing up for righteousness and justice. It's standing up for freedom, a freedom that knows action, a love that is in action. I stand up for Black women because it's a Black woman who told me to say her name. Say her name. Breonna Taylor. Say her name. Breonna Taylor. Say her name.

Breonna Taylor. After the break, we'll hear from one of Tessa's colleagues at The Courier-Journal about how justice for Breonna Taylor has upended the race for Mitch McConnell's seat in the United States Senate. Say her name. Breonna Taylor. And now I say her name. Breonna Taylor.

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos from. Up until a few weeks ago, when people talked about the Senate race in Kentucky, they talked about Amy McGrath. Amy McGrath, the former Marine fighter pilot who was going to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Democratic Party put all its weight behind her, not because it necessarily thought she could win, but because she could certainly raise a boatload of money fighting Mitch. Kentucky had its primary this week.

On Tuesday, Amy McGrath was supposed to coast to victory over the other Democrats vying to run against Mitch, but she didn't. Because of Breonna Taylor. The Justice for Breonna Taylor movement has been helping the candidacy of a guy named Charles Booker. Charles is running on Medicare for All. He's running on climate change and a Green New Deal, what he calls a Kentucky New Deal. He's running on legalization of a Green New Deal, what he calls a Kentucky New Deal. He's running on legalization of marijuana. He believes in reparations. Philip M. Bailey covers politics for The Courier-Journal.

Lately, that means he covers Charles Booker. He's running as a lefty, whereas in these past challengers of McConnell, they've always sort of tried to appeal to the middle, trying to flip certain conservative voters and say, oh, McConnell doesn't care about you. Charles is starting from a different premise. He started from, here are my values. They are clearly left of center. And Mitch McConnell doesn't care about you. So rather than playing this game where the McConnell campaign often tries to get these Democratic candidates to say, aren't you really a liberal? Charles has started from a premise of, I voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016 in the primary. I ultimately voted for Hillary Clinton and I was endorsed by Bernie Sanders

and I endorsed him for president, right? He's starting from a whole different premise and one that the Kentucky left, particularly in Louisville, Lexington, those areas and in parts of rural Appalachia have been begging for, which is be true to your values at the outset and let's work from there. Tell me how Charles Booker differs from Amy McGrath or even Mitch McConnell on Black Lives Matter specifically. There is what I call the white woke, the both millennials born from 1981 to 96, but also Generation Z, demographers show are emerging as a real voting bloc in bulk here. So what Charles is benefiting from is he's coming along at the right time. Black Lives Matter means something very different to white people below the age of 39 than it does to white baby boomers and those who are older.

So Charles feels much more comfortable in these settings, whether it's in Louisville or it's in Eastern Kentucky. He went out to Whitesburg, right, all the way out in Eastern Kentucky and had a Black Lives Matter rally that he participated in. There were Black Lives Matter marches in Corbin, Kentucky, which has a history of racial strife from the early 20th century, where they literally put all the African-Americans on a train and shipped them away to Tennessee. So he's benefiting in a way that I think a lot of mainstream Democrats just weren't prepared for. McGrath, when they had their single debate for the Democratic primary, she was asked, have you participated in any of these protests in Louisville and Lexington? And she said, I did not. Well, I've been with my family and I've had some family

things going on this past weekend, but I've been following the news and, you know, and watching and making sure that, you know, I think we're in the middle of a pandemic. So we also have to look at, you know, is that the place to be right now? Booker's campaign immediately pounces on that, uses that clip in an ad, and then juxtaposes her comments with Charles being on the steps in front of people with a mask on. I stand before you as your brother, as your cousin, as your neighbor, as your fellow good troublemaker. My name is Charles Booker. For Mitch McConnell, I think he's also caught in a shift here. He pretty early on embraced Breonna Taylor, putting her name in a resolution. He's obviously trying to stitch together, along with Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, some sort of police reform efforts. But at the same time, it's pretty

clear when you listen to the people in the streets, whether they're in Louisville, Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, Atlanta, et cetera, et cetera, they're demanding far greater reforms than simply what they were doing last time, which was body cameras. There's a whole defund police movement talking about shifting money away from police departments into healthcare centers, into more social services, housing, et cetera, that I think Charles is certainly seen as the more authentic candidate for, more so than McGrathath and definitely more so by these lefties in the street than McConnell. And that authenticity Booker has relates back to Breonna Taylor. There's a connection there. Absolutely.

But he wasn't being opportunistic. It wasn't like this happened and then suddenly he began to adopt the Black Lives Matter language. He has an infamous floor speech as a state rep. What a roller coaster I've been on this session. I've laid all my stories out for you. I explained to you how these types of laws like 150 would kill people. He then speaks over his time and his microphone is cut off and he's galloped out and told to sit down by some lawmakers. And he screams out, my life matters too speaker. My life matters too speaker. You are out of order. Your three minutes are up. My life matters too. This was months before Breonna Taylor was even killed. So Charles was

able to bring an authenticity to this connecting mainstream electoral politics to this grassroots movement in a way that did not seem forced, did not seem consulted to death and seemed very authentic. It's also very personal for Charles as well. His cousin, TJ, who was killed in Louisville, not by police, but years ago, who was a part of this group called the Misidentified Four, who got wrapped up into a police arrest where they were innocent of, very similar to the Central Park Five, his cousin was friends with Breonna Taylor. They were personal friends when they were young people, when they were teenagers. And he talks about that often.

So Charles not only has the benefit of this lightning bolt and his luck of being this African-American candidate speaking about these issues where this mass movement happens literally in his political backyard. But he also has personal connections to these individuals in a way that Amy McGrath and Mitch McConnell do not. So you had this election on Tuesday. I know the results aren't final yet, but how's it looking? I'm not really willing to say what these early numbers actually mean overall. These are so, so marginal of our overall vote. It's really not very clear. But one thing I think we can say is that Charles Booker has already won.

He's captured the hearts and minds and imagination of the Kentucky left in a way that you've never seen before. So Booker has, I think, already done something that he was never anticipated to do. And even if Amy McGrath wins this race, she's going to come in with a flat tire. You were picked by the National Party. You've raised a ton of money, out-raised Mitch McConnell, and yet you weren't able to get 51% or it seemed like you were having a very difficult time finishing off someone who many people considered a nobody a few months ago.

Let's say Booker does beat Amy McGrath, which would be this enormous upset. What do you think it would mean for Louisville, Kentucky, the country, if he could defeat the Senate majority leader? Well, if Charles Booker, and I've known Charles for, I think, maybe 16 years or so, we went to UofL together. I'll say this, if he defeats Amy McGrath, it's probably the greatest political upset in Kentucky's history and maybe one of the greatest political upsets in the country's history. It's going to be an uphill battle if Charles is the victor against Mitch McConnell. But one thing I think people can't say, if Charles is the nominee, you can't say,

oh, he's the underdog. There's no way he can beat Mitch McConnell. That's the exact same thing people said about him and Amy McGrath. So I think what it is, it's a test. It's a test of an African-American candidate who's going to have hugely popular and large numbers in those communities. But it also says something about the changing white community, particularly, like I said, this white woke generation of millennials and Generation Z together, who seem to take, according to polling, black lives matter far more seriously. We're not in the post-civil rights generation anymore. We're in the post-Obama generation. The kids who are growing up now, the young people who are voting now, they grew up with an African-American president when they were teenagers or young children.

And now they're voting. They're not shocked by or unaccustomed to seeing a black first family, to seeing black children milling about and playing in the White House, to see an African-American, a dark-skinned African-American woman as first lady of the United States. It's not something that they're even uneasy about or what I call white liberal skepticism. When a white person who says that they're very racially up-minded, but they'll go and say, I just don't know if we're ready to do that. Are we ready for... That's not, I think think what people are seeing here.

And that's shifting, not just along lines of race. I think we're seeing that shift along lines of LGBTQ identity. I think we're seeing it also perhaps even shift with women in public office where people aren't as skeptical or naysayers like they were. And that was the first hump I think that really Charles had to overcome here in Kentucky. You had a lot of mainstream Democrats saying when he first got in, I like Charles. I know him. I agree with it. I agree with his policies. Right. But saying, but can he do well outside of Louisville?

That's a wink and a nod and a cold word of he's black. Can he do well? A couple of things. Kentucky last year elected an African-American as attorney general. Now, Daniel Cameron, who's Mitch McConnell's protege in many ways, is a conservative's conservative. But still, breaking that glass ceiling, I think, shows that Kentucky is in a different place historically than it was 20, 30, 50 years ago. And I think also, again, you have to go that this coalition that Charles is building, urban African-Americans, sort of suburban, urban, liberal whites, younger liberal whites, and sort of your counterculture baby boomers out in these rural areas who are frustrated by Senator McConnell and maybe turning on President Trump as well. He's putting together a coalition and he's putting together an experiment.

The Democrats who are behind him say, look, every other Democrat you've thrown against Mitch McConnell for the past 35 years has lost. Senator McConnell was elected in 1984 when Charles and I were both born. He's always been the senator as far as I've been concerned. So the thought is that let's try something different amongst Democrats. And I think that's what those who are supporting Charles are doing. And I think that's why Amy McGrath is having a problem, even with all of her money and traditional campaign infrastructure infrastructure is having a hard time getting over that 51% threshold. Well, I hope we can be in touch as this race plays out and hear back from you again.

Yep. Thank you, sir. All right. Thanks very much. Philip M. Bailey and Tessa Duvall are both reporters at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. They've been doing great work on the Breonna Taylor story. You can read and support it at courier-journal.com. The Today Explained team includes Amina Alsadi, Halima Shah, Afim Shapiro, Bridget McCarthy, Muj Zaydi, Jillian Weinberger, and Noam Hassenfeld, who makes music for the show along with the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Cecilia Lay is our fact checker, and Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Bye.