Breonna Taylor’s family on Friday demanded that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to no charges being brought against police officers who killed the black woman during a raid at her apartment.
The decision disappointed and angered those who have been calling for justice for Taylor for six months, and protesters vowed to stay in the streets until all the officers involved are fired or someone is charged with her killing.
A diverse group, including Taylor’s mother, marched through Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday evening. The protests were peaceful, although at one point, police in riot gear fired flash bang devices to turn back a crowd on a street.
Photo: AFP
Two were arrested, authorities said.
About a dozen people who were out past the city’s 9pm curfew were arrested later.
Earlier, Taylor’s lawyers and family expressed dismay that no one has been held accountable for her death.
“I am an angry Black woman. I am not angry for the reasons that you would like me to be. But angry because our Black women keep dying at the hands of police officers — and Black men,” Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, wrote in a statement read by a relative.
She stood close by, wearing a shirt that said: “I [heart] Louisville Police,” with bullet holes in the heart symbol.
Palmer’s statement said the criminal justice system had failed her, and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron was the final person in the chain, following the officer who sought a no-knock warrant as part of a drug investigation, the judge who signed it and police who burst into Taylor’s apartment.
The warrant was connected to a suspect who did not live there and no drugs were found inside.
Taylor was shot multiple times by white officers after her boyfriend fired at them, authorities said.
The boyfriend said he did not know who was coming in and fired in self-defense, wounding one officer.
Cameron, Kentucky’s first black attorney general, said that the officers were not charged with Taylor’s killing, because they acted to protect themselves.
The grand jury indicted one officer on endangerment charges, saying that he fired gunshots into a neighboring home that did not strike anyone.
He has been fired.
“I hope you never know the pain of your child being murdered 191 days in a row,” said Bianca Austin, wearing her niece’s emergency medical technician jacket as she read Palmer’s statement.
Family attorney Sam Aguiar said all the videos should be released, as Cameron’s investigation is over, adding that he has seen dozens of them, most of which are not public.
Cameron “got so much wrong. We’ve seen so much piecemeal stuff come out throughout the case,” he said without giving specifics.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, also has called on the Republican attorney general to release what evidence he can.
Cameron said through a spokeswoman that he understood the family’s pain.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but prosecutors and grand jury members are bound by the facts and by the law,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuhn said in a statement.
As Taylor’s family decried how the case was handled, a man accused of shooting and wounding two officers during protests on Wednesday appeared in court.
A not-guilty plea was entered for Larynzo Johnson, 26, and bond was set at US$1 million.
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