zlacker

>>evo_9+(OP)
USA Today has the best coverage of this I’ve seen. The NYT coverage of this is awful: https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html

A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under the heading “What Happened in Louisville?” doesn’t mention Taylor‘s boyfriend shooting first. Instead, you need to go down several paragraphs to learn that fact. Which leaves the whole article deeply confused: at first you think police just started shooting for no reason, and then later you learn they shot because they were fired upon. Which of course leaves the reader with little understanding of what police actually did wrong. Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? Is that the problem?

Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon. What the police did wrong, instead, is failing to respect black peoples’ second and fourth amendment rights. This happened in Kentucky, where if you barge into someone’s house in the middle of the night you can expect to get shot. Police barging into people’s homes in the middle of the night unannounced is fundamentally incompatible with what the Constitution and Kentucky law gives homeowners the right to do: shoot at intruders in their home. And as such the practice of serving these no-knock warrants is an infringement of that right. It leads to tragic consequences under predictable circumstances where homeowners are just exercising their rights. And of course, it’s doubtful that officers display the same callousness to the possibility of armed homeowners when it comes to policing white neighborhoods. It’s another one in a long pattern of cases where black people are murdered for daring to exercise their second amendment rights.

>>rayine+c6
> Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them?

How about: they should be held responsible for the preventable death of this woman in a situation they directly and deliberately created? Is that not the problem?

I don't think anyone is demanding a first degree murder conviction here. They didn't walk in with the intent to kill her. But they sure as shit did kill her, and it's all their fault that it happened. Sounds like open and shut manslaughter to me.

>>newacc+Za
People never talk about the judge in these cases. This only happened because a judge decided to sign a no-knock warrant. So, ultimately, doesn’t the judge bear a large portion of the responsibility for creating the situation, for the death that resulted? Shouldn’t the judge be the adult in the room, saying “no” to the police, saying that the circumstances are not extraordinary enough to justify the issuance of a no-knock, with the clear risk to life that this entails, and telling them to find another way?

>>leephi+lV
The judge issued a warrant that was requested by the police. Likely by the officers involved (though I don't know if that's been reported). I mean yes: you're right, our judiciary should be serving as a better backstop on public safety concerns than they are. And that's a problem.

But the court signed off on the warrant that law enforcement wanted. As I see it it's still the police holding the bag here.

>>newacc+o82
Of course; that’s the way it works. But I’m proposing the radical idea that there is a reason for the 4th amendment, and the judges might consider reviewing the evidence and thinking about—nay, judging, even—whether the situation warrants granting what should be an extraordinary request by the police. And that we the people, and the press, especially, should consider it proper to hold them to account, especially when there is a tragic consequence. Nobody ever asks the judge, “why did you sign this warrant? Why was this extreme measure necessary?”

>>leephi+ii2
You seem to be changing the subject. Upthread, you argued that the judge bore a "large portion" of the blame for this shooting. Here you're just saying that judges need to be better.

I agree. But I still don't see how, if I ask you to let me commit a crime, and you say yes, that makes you more culpable than me. The word for that is "accessory", and it's by definition a lesser crime.

>>newacc+nw2
I think you’re confusing the expression “large portion” with something like “most”.