Police in Louisville are again the target of protests. Photo: Reuters.
Two police officers have been wounded by bullets in Louisville during the demonstrations within hours of the exoneration of the three officers who led to the shooting death of Breonna Taylor , 26, a health worker , six months ago. In the early morning hours of March 13, the young black woman was at her home in this Kentucky city, sleeping with her 27-year-old boyfriend Kenner Walker when investigators broke in.
The court resolution caused the protests to spread to other cities in the United States, especially New York, Washington, Atlanta or Chicago. The name of Breonna Taylor has been one of the most chanted on the streets of the United States since in May, following the death in police custody of the African American George Floyd, the agitation against uniformed brutality and racism spread.
Robert Schroeder, interim chief of the Louisville metropolitan police, explained on Wednesday night that a person was arrested for opening fire on the uniformed men. The two wounded were part of the units sent to dissolve a group of concentrates in the central zone. Eyewitnesses indicated that the shooting occurred after the uniformed officers fired pepper spray and rubber bullets. Many protesters carried weapons, something totally allowed in Kentucky.
Protest in Chicago after learning the news of the Breonna Taylor case. Photo: EFE.
By the time of Schroeder’s appearance, a while after the curfew came into effect at 9:00 p.m., the vast majority of the protesters had withdrawn, while the police maintained a great show of force.
They were not caught off guard because Mayor Greg Fischer, aware of the imminence of the decision, already ordered on Tuesday that the deployment be made and federal buildings protected.
Indignation, anger, tears and the feeling that blacks cannot even sleep peacefully at home erupted as soon as the exoneration of the three white officers – Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly and Detectives Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankinson – was released. for Taylor’s death.
There were some fires, clashes between protesters and police throughout the afternoon and early evening, and at least 50 were arrested.
Breonna Taylor’s name has been remembered again in several US cities such as Oakland. Photo: EFE.
As a kind of mockery, the grand jury indicted Detective Hankinson three counts of reckless negligence. But because of the projectiles that ended up in the apartment next to that of the deceased, who received six hits.
“There is no evidence that Hankinson’s bullets hit Taylor,” noted Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron. Cameron indicated that, from the tests, “Matingly and Cosgrove responded justifiably to protect themselves” once Taylor opened fire.
Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Taylor family, called the decision “outrageous and scandalous.” “A national disgrace,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, which fights for the rights of non-whites. “The justice system has failed Breonna and everyone,” he tweeted.
The attorney general argued that the death of this young woman, turned into an injection of vindictive energy for the Black Lives Matter movement, is a tragedy, although not a crime. “We want the truth or the truth that satisfies our narrative,” he said.
He explained that his office was limited to collecting evidence for the Grand Jury to decide. “The justice of the mob is not justice,” stressed Cameron, a Republican, in language that echoed President Trump’s rhetoric in stigmatizing those who protest against racism. At the press conference, Cameron despised “celebrities, activists or influencers who have never set foot in this state and who tell us what to do.”
In his appearance before the press on Wednesday, Donald Trump only read a passage of what Cameron had previously said. No personal consideration, not a word of comfort to the Taylor family.
(With information from La Vanguardia )