March 13^th in Louisville, Kentucky.  Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sound asleep when they woke to the sound of their door being broken down and in the dark, they saw three men with guns pointed at them.  Mr. Walker grabbed his own gun from the nightstand and fired a single shot, hitting one of the men in the leg.  The three men then proceeded to fire no less than 22 shots at Breonna and Kenneth, 8 of which found their target in Ms. Taylor’s body, killing her.

The three men were police officers, men hired to protect the public, but instead they killed a valuable member of the public.

Breonna Taylor was an EMT for the city of Louisville, and she also worked at two local hospitals. Taylor was a full-time ER technician for the University of Louisville Jewish Hospital and she worked as needed for Norton Healthcare.  On her Facebook page, Taylor described her love for helping others …

“Working in health care is so rewarding! It makes me so happy when I know I’ve made a difference in someone else’s life!”

So, why did police murder Ms. Taylor?  They were seeking a man they believed was selling drugs, and who, as it turns out, was already in police custody, who did not even live near Ms. Taylor, and they had no reason to believe they would find him in her apartment.  They had obtained what’s called a “no-knock warrant”, yet later they falsely claimed they had knocked several times, identifying themselves as police, and received no answer.  Breonna Taylor, by the way, was Black.  Take a look at the three officers involved …Notice anything?  Three lily-white officers.  None of the officers were wearing body cams, so there is no video footage to clarify.  Ms. Taylor lived for several minutes after the shooting, but the officers waited five minutes before calling an ambulance and in the interim offered no assistance.

Fast forward to yesterday, September 23^rd, when only one of the three officers, Brett Hankison, was indicted on three counts of “wanton endangerment” for firing shots that went into another apartment near Ms. Taylor’s, where a pregnant woman, her husband and their five-year-old child were sleeping. Hankison’s bond was set at a measly $15,000, for which he will only need to cough up $1,500. Not a single one of the officers is to be held accountable for murdering an innocent young woman.  No charges were announced against the other two officers who fired shots, and no one was charged for causing Ms. Taylor’s death.  To add insult to injury, one of the officers, Jonathan Mattingly, stated …

“I know we did the legal, moral and ethical thing that night.”

Say WHAT???  How the Sam Hell does he figure it was “legal, moral and ethical” to murder an innocent young woman? This isn’t the wild west where the motto was “shoot first and ask questions later.”  How different do you think it might have gone if the officers had been Black and the victim a young, white woman?

We the People are sick and tired of this bullshit!  Last night in Louisville, some 100 miles south of my home, there were protests calling for justice for Breonna Taylor.  Unfortunately, two police officers were shot in the melee, and while I am sorry there was violence, sorry the officers were shot, I am not surprised.  Both officers are reported to be in stable condition.

We the People have had just about as much of racist police brutality as we’re going to take without fighting back.  We the People want to see these smug white arseholes held accountable for their actions.  We want to see justice; we want police to be trained in matters of racial tolerance.  Until we make genuine progress, until we can go a year without white cops murdering unarmed, innocent Black people, the protests are going to continue, and some will turn violent no matter how many armed goons Donald Trump sends into a city!

Yesterday, there was no justice for Breonna Taylor, there was only a mockery of justice.  Interim Police Chief Robert Schroeder says he fears for the safety of his officers.  If the three officers who murdered Breonna Taylor had been arrested and charged as they should have been, there would be no protests, no violence, and he would not need to fear for the safety of his officers.  Actions have consequences, as we all learned around the age of three when we put our hand on that hot stove.  But for officers Mattingly, Hankison and Cosgrove, the consequences for murder were nil.  Meanwhile, Breonna Taylor is still dead and the world lost a kind, caring human being.