Today, Explained - Justice For Breonna Taylor (Part II)

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

One of the three officers who shot at Breonna Taylor’s apartment was indicted ... for endangering her neighbors. Tessa Duvall from the Louisville Courier-Journal explains. And Vox’s Fabiola Cineas says the ruling isn’t surprising. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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about a police shooting that killed an unarmed black woman in her own apartment. A lot of questions were unanswered at the time, but Tessa joined us again this morning because we had some big developments this week. We got an answer on Wednesday. The Jefferson County grand jury charges as follows. Out of the three officers who fired their weapons at Breonna Taylor's apartment back in March, only one of them has been indicted. And that was former Louisville detective Brett Hankison. Count one, wanton endangerment in the first degree. That's a

class D felony that can carry between one and five years in prison. Count two, wanton endangerment in the first degree. But as the judge was reading the counts, Count three, wanton endangerment in the first degree. She was saying the initials of the residents who were endangered by these shots. He wantonly shot a gun into the apartment occupied by initials CE. And none of those initials, we noticed pretty quickly quickly were BT for Breonna Taylor. Occupied by initials CN. Or KW for Kenny Walker. Occupied by initials ZF.

So we figured out that while there were these three counts of wanton endangerment, they weren't actually for endangering Breonna. They were for shots that endangered her neighbors. So the grand jury didn't find any wrongdoing with how the police approached Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend, but they did find that the police recklessly endangered the lives of Breonna Taylor's neighbors. Yes. So when Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is in his first term in office, spoke about this, he explained that...

Our investigation showed, and the grand jury agreed, that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their return of deadly fire after having been fired upon by Kenneth Walker. That self-defense response didn't play out with Brett Hankison to the same degree because he was not firing from that doorway. Detective Hankison fired his weapon from an outside sliding glass door and through a bedroom window.

That's why he was fired from the police department over the summer. And that's why he's facing these reckless endangerment charges. Some bullets traveled through apartment four and into apartment three. A neighboring apartment behind her. Three residents of apartment three were at home, including a male, a pregnant female, and a child. So that's why he's facing charges and the other two officers aren't. Just so I can make sure I had this clear, the attorney general said that this one officer, Detective Hankinson, who was further away,

he wasn't firing in self-defense, but the other two officers were. Essentially, yes. He said that... According to Kentucky law, the use of force by Mattingly and Cosgrove was justified to protect themselves. Because these officers were, in his opinion, acting in self-defense, that homicide charges shouldn't apply here. This justification bars us from pursuing criminal charges in Ms. Breonna Taylor's death. How many shots did the cops fire in total? Do we know? We knew that Brett Hankison was accused of firing 10 rounds blindly from outside the apartment. And Attorney General Daniel Cameron said that he fired 10 times in total.

So that's six from Mattingly, 10 from Hankison. And then we also learned that Detective Cosgrove fired a total of 16 times. So more than 30 shots in total from these three officers were fired into Breonna Taylor's apartment, with several of them going into an apartment next to hers and an apartment upstairs. And how many shots were fired by Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, to set off this firefight? Kenneth Walker fired one shot. Yeah. The last time we spoke, we spent a lot of time focused on the no-knock warrant that had been issued to these police officers. Have we learned anything more there? So we know from court records that police sought and were given a warrant with a no-knock clause on it. Sergeant Mattingly, based on the testimony that we had heard he had given to investigators, he says that they are saying, police, come to the door, police, search

warrant. Banged on the door, no response. Banged on it again, no response. At that point, we started announcing ourselves, police, please come to the door. Please, we have a search warrant. Based on Kenneth Walker's statements that he gave to police, he said they heard a knocking, they heard this pounding, but they had no idea who it was from inside the apartment. So it's a loud boom at the door. First thing she said was, 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. You know, that sets up a discrepancy. You know, did Kenneth Walker know he was firing at police when this all began and triggered this series of events? Daniel Cameron said definitively that evidence shows that officers both knocked and announced their presence at the apartment. He reached that conclusion based on statements made by the officers and one neighbor.

In other words, the warrant was not served as a no-knock warrant. That has not sat well with a lot of people. Taylor's family attorney, Ben Crump, says that's not true. Everybody there said they never heard the police identify themselves. Journalists from local to national have, you know, been all over that apartment complex talking to neighbors. And the neighbors are saying, we didn't hear anything. We didn't know it was police. They've even talked to neighbors who said, well, we called the police when we heard the shooting. We didn't know the shooting was the

police. And so attorneys for Breonna's family and journalists are confused as to why one neighbor and his statements carry more weight than, you know, 10 plus other neighbors who did not hear police. How does this verdict gel with the settlement that Breonna Taylor's family received, I think, last week. What we heard from the attorney general and the grand jury on Wednesday is the result of a criminal investigation. But last week, we saw Breonna Taylor's family and attorneys announce alongside city leaders that they had resolved a civil lawsuit for the wrongful death of Breonna Taylor. That was huge. I mean, it was a $12 million settlement, which is the largest police payout in Louisville history, but it's also one of the largest for a police shooting in the nation. But, you know, protesters look at this $12 million settlement and they say, one, her family deserves every single cent of that and more.

And people say, why is the city paying $12 million if those officers didn't do anything wrong? And of course, protesters have been calling for criminal charges against these officers in the death of Breonna Taylor for months now. Does this indictment mean that will never happen? There is still a federal investigation surrounding Breonna Taylor's death, and the FBI is looking into how the warrant was obtained, what happened that night. They're looking for civil rights violations. So it's not over yet, even though, obviously, like you said, protesters are really unhappy about this. You know, the rallying cry, the commentary from celebrities, the t-shirts, the memes, the slogan. Tyler Heros Gordon double figures every game this postseason. He's been putting in work for a young fella. But it'd also be a great day to arrest the cops that murdered Breonna Taylor.

It's all been arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. Arrest the cops! Arrest the cops all been arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. And Daniel Cameron made it very clear that that's not going to happen. That's not, you know, one endangerment was the charge they were going to go with for one officer. What was the reaction in Louisville after this verdict came down on Wednesday? There's a lot of grief. There are people who are mourning. There are also people who are mad as hell. We are the Taylor! We are the Taylor! Who feel like this is just another example of police getting away with killing a Black person. And so, you know, we did see protests the last couple of nights.

The city is under a curfew. The National Guard is here. And on Wednesday night, two officers were shot while, you know, out working the protests. I'm Robert Schroeder, chief of Police, Louisville Metro Police Department. At about 8.30 tonight, our officers were called to the area of Farrokin College. Shots rang out and two of our officers were shot. Both officers are currently undergoing treatment at University Hospital. One is in alert and stable. The other officer is currently undergoing surgery and stable.

You know, thankfully, their injuries were not life-threatening, and they're both expected to recover. But it's really like the city is undergoing this collective trauma. How has Breonna Taylor's family attorneys yesterday who recounted the moment that Tamika Palmer learned that no one was being charged for her daughter's death. And both attorneys I spoke to just described it as her just, you know, immediately just breaking down, just falling apart that, you know, she couldn't speak. You know, the attorneys have consistently been raising the point of how can you endanger the neighbors, but not endanger Brianna? That's what they can't make sense of, and that's what they're mad about. This is absolutely not what Breonna Taylor's family wanted to hear. They were very clear from the get-go that they wanted officers held criminally responsible

for Breonna Taylor's death, and they didn't get that. More in a minute. I'm Sean Ramos-Furham. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.

And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com. Explained. Ramp.com. Explained. R-A-M-P.com. Explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Fabiola Sineas, you report on race here at Vox. Tell me, you know, the Justice for Breonna Taylor movement, what exactly did that movement mean by justice? What did people want to see? Yeah, I think what's been fascinating about the movement for Breonna Taylor's life and the movement for Justice for Breonna Taylor over the past couple of months is that it meant very different things to different people.

So there were some people who were saying, arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor, right? For them, justice was seeing Brett Hankinson being taken away in handcuffs and seeing the other two officers who also fired their guns that night be taken away in handcuffs. But then there were some people who were like, justice doesn't mean seeking retribution, seeking punishment within the current system as it stands. So people were saying, actually, we need to stop centering Breonna Taylor in this. And we actually need to see how this is just part of a bigger movement to say there's so much more work to be done in the criminal justice system, whether that's reforming it, defunding the police, or just abolishing the system altogether. So it ran the gamut from actually put these cops

in handcuffs to get rid of cops altogether. But was anyone out there clamoring for a wanton endangerment charge for just one of the police officers? Absolutely not. I don't think that anyone got what they were looking for in the situation, but I think that maybe some people were more shocked than others, right? So the people who were actually still looking for the system to produce some kind of justice were shocked and confused, whereas the people who are already divested from it were like, this is what we expected. So for example, since March 13th, according to the Washington Post's police tracker, more than 80 black people have been killed at the hands of police. And a study from the

Mapping Police Violence database found that 99% of killings by police between the years of 2013 and 2019 haven't even resulted in officers being charged with a crime. So this happens a lot, and it's pretty rare for police officers to be charged. Has there been justice in other cases that have gotten a lot of attention this summer, like George Floyd or Jacob Blake or Rayshard Brooks? Yeah, I'd say in the case of George Floyd, where a white officer from Minneapolis basically kneeled on his neck, he got charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. And in the cases of Rayshard Brooks and Jacob Blake, who were also shot by police this summer, we don't have any decisions yet. But historically speaking, I don't know that it would make a lot of sense for protesters

to look forward to justice in those cases either. Where has the discussion in this country about abolishing the police or defunding the police left off. I mean, there were a lot of initial promises and pledges and reforms after the death of George Floyd, but now, I mean, the most conspicuous conversation that seems to be happening around it is the president trying to say Joe Biden wants to abolish the police,

and Joe Biden saying, actually, no, I don't. I'd say in the beginning, we saw a lot of attention on the Black Lives Matter movement. We saw public opinion shift, right? So many Americans are now saying that they believe that racism is a problem in America. They believe that funds should be taken away from police and given to other essential community services like social workers, mental health care workers. When we're starting to look at what's happening at individual police departments, we aren't seeing much movement on the defund front. So, for example, in Louisville, where Breonna Taylor was killed, activists who were calling for the defunding of police, they have not seen any

wins on that front. We have seen like the Louisville Metro Council ban no-knock warrants. And we also saw the Kentucky Attorney General say that he's going to launch a task force following this decision to basically investigate the way that warrants are applied for and the way in which they're executed. And that's something that people are saying is just not enough. We also saw with the $12 million settlement that Louisville announced before the grand jury's decision a list of police reforms that they wanted to begin to put into action. And those included, you know, giving police officers credits for living in low-income neighborhoods or encouraging police officers to do community service. But those are just so far from the funding that activists are calling for.

And outside Kentucky, outside Louisville? And outside Louisville, I'd say the movement is just about the same, right? We've seen like some school districts, for example, in Portland and their contracts with police departments. We've seen, like in Rochester, the mayor following the killing of Daniel Prude or the release of that video say that she failed the city and she's going to start an effort to basically reallocate funding to social workers who can basically help police officers who get calls related to mental health. New York State's attorney general is now making a decision about when to publicly release body camera footage in the case of police-involved deaths.

Daniel Prude died on March 23rd, but footage of his killing wasn't released until months later. So it sounds like what we ended up with is a patchwork of police reforms across the country. We didn't have a sort of national police reform reimagination. We just had sort of cities that have issues with police violence against Black people second-guessing and reconsidering their policies. Is that fair? That's definitely fair to say, especially when we look at, you mentioned Joe Biden before. His plan is to actually, right, increase funding to police because he believes that, you know, one of the strongest avenues to fixing policing is community policing, right? Police being out on the streets, having positive interactions with civilians. But the movement is definitely far from over because I think this year

we just started just saying things that have never been said so casually in public, right? This year, we see people saying systemic racism exists. We see people saying that we need to rethink policing. And I think that the fact that these terms, these phrases are just entering people's vocabulary means that this is only a start. Breonna Taylor's death also shows us that Black women especially don't receive justice under the American criminal justice system. One of Breonna Taylor's attorneys, Ben Crump, from the very beginning basically highlighted the fact that Breonna Taylor's case got more attention

because people saw the death of George Floyd and rallied around that. And so her name basically jumped into popular discussions following the death of George Floyd. I also think this moment just shows that the system is working the way that it was designed. No officers were indicted in her killing. Brett Hankinson's indictment was for the fact that he shot through the walls and the bullets went through Breonna Taylor's apartment and into her neighbor's apartment.

So his indictment, again, just had nothing to do with the fact that Breonna Taylor was shot dead in her apartment. All black lives matter here. How do we fight? Justice! And when do we want it? Now! How do we fight? Justice! was shot dead in her apartment. What if we don't get it? Shut it down! What if we don't get it? Shut it down! You can read Fabiola's writing on Breonna Taylor's case at Vox.com.

Tessa Duvall has a newsletter dedicated to Breonna Taylor's case. You can find it over at the Courier-Journal's website. You can also find a link to it over at Today Explained on Twitter. We are at today underscore explained. you