Breonna Taylor case
Devastating testimony for Louisville police
3/8/2023 9:34 p.m
Police officers kicked open the door of 26-year-old paramedic Breonna Taylor during a raid three years ago. The woman dies in a firefight between officers and her boyfriend. Protests erupt across the country at this time. Now the US Department of Justice is coming to an assessment.
Three years after the fatal shooting of African-American woman Breonna Taylor during a raid on her home, the US Department of Justice has issued a devastating testimony to the Louisville City Police Department on principle. Police officers in the city in the state of Kentucky would use excessive force, discriminate against black people and conduct unlawful home searches, the Justice Department in Washington said. Some police officers insulted blacks as “monkeys” and “animals”.
The Justice Department also accused security forces of improper chokeholds and excessive use of police dogs and tasers in its investigation into Louisville police practice. Police officers would also carry out apartment searches on the basis of invalid search warrants and, contrary to the rules, would not knock on the apartment door. The police also have an “aggressive” way of working, which they use “selectively” – “especially against blacks”.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Louisville police force violated the “constitutional rights” of the city’s citizens, thereby undermining trust in their work. According to the information, the police committed themselves to remedying the abuses.
Night raid resulting in death
The Justice Department had launched an investigation into the Louisville Police Department more than a year after Breonna Taylor’s death. The 26-year-old paramedic was shot dead by police officers on March 13, 2020 when plainclothes officers stormed her apartment during a nighttime drug raid. Taylor’s friend, believing it was a robbery, opened fire with his gun, which he legally owned. Officers fired back, fatally hitting Taylor while her boyfriend was unharmed.
Taylor’s deaths and the deaths of George Floyd in a brutal police operation in Minneapolis in May 2020 were the focus of a wave of protests across the United States against police brutality and racism under the slogan Black Lives Matter. In the United States, deadly police violence against blacks repeatedly causes outrage.
Next investigation is pending
Only in January was there another sensational case: five police officers in the city of Memphis in the southern state of Tennessee beat 29-year-old Tire Nichols so brutally during a traffic stop that he died of his injuries three days later in the hospital. The case sparked widespread protests and reignited the debate about police violence in the United States. The officers were fired and charged with second-degree murder, an intermediate stage between manslaughter and murder in Tennessee. The US Department of Justice announced Wednesday a full investigation into the Memphis Police Department.
The police officers now accused were part of a special unit that was only set up in 2021 to better respond to organized crime and drug-related crimes. It was disbanded after the brutal incident. In the USA, the police have long been criticized for being accused of excessive and sometimes brutal use of force, especially during traffic stops. Often the victims are black.