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.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I don't live in China. But it's pretty embarrassing for the richest and most powerful country in the world (allegedly bearing the mantle of freedom and democracy and Enlightenment values), to have to compare ourselves to totalitarian dictatorships to feel better about ourselves, instead of other democracies, most of whom have yearly counts of deaths by law enforcement in the single digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
>It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement. Police officers are employed pursuant to a contract. A contractual benefit is considered a property interest that cannot be taken away without “due process.” Hence police officers remain employed (and getting paid) until an investigation establishes they actually did something wrong. Private employers don’t need to provide due process so this doesn’t apply.
probably deleted because it's wrong; deleted before i could submit my response:
>It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement.
you're wrong
> “Property interests, of course, are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law—rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits.”
so it's a matter of “legitimate entitlements”. in fact "legislature may elect not to confer a property interest in federal employment" and moreover in Bishop v. Wood SC accepted a lower court's opinion that police are employed at will even if discharge is conditional on due process.
all this and more at https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...
There is a danger in this tabula rasa sort of thinking. If we think only of imaginary scenarios and "in theory this is how it works", we're likely to ignore the very real consequences of this awful practice. Ms Taylor isn't the first person to die in this situation (innocent person killed entirely due to police incompetence); neither is she the thousandth. Lots of police die from no-knocks gone awry as well. There is no reason for any of this. If police know where the suspect is located, they may collect her or him at any time. When the suspect is a regular person with a regular job, why not make an arrest when she or he leaves the house to go to work in the morning? How about arresting the suspect at work, with no opportunity to hide evidence or resist?
The "nightmare scenario" that cynical police spin for credulous judges is that drugs might be flushed down a toilet. But drug prohibition is itself cynical and evil. Prohibition has only ever harmed American society. As we collectively wake from our long nightmare of drug enforcement, we must do away with all the insidious menaces that it has inspired. Our police will not be replaced overnight with "responsible" authoritarians, so we must not "imagine" we can safely allow them the tools of authoritarian tyranny, on the off chance that they might not be used in the way they have always been used. You write as if it's only because of "unprofessional" actions that Ms Taylor was killed. In fact, "unprofessionalism" is why we are blaming the police, but people like Ms Taylor are killed in no-knock raids even when every action is performed in adequately "professional" fashion. Occasionally no one dies senselessly, but these raids are always dangerous and unnecessary. That is a practical truth, which overrides "objective" theory.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/03/no-knock-...
[0] https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending/charges-dropped-a...
According to your link, the US leads the world in prison population, period.
"The city has since released Walker's 911 call — but only after an attorney for Taylor's family gave it to news media hours earlier."
That 911 call can be heard here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonn...
It was a piece calling for the government to murder protesters which the editor solicited and published without reading. Nor was any context or commentary provided indicating such.
(edit) You can also see, now, after the backlash, NYT agrees that it probably shouldn't have been published.
Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...
Basically it boils down to:
* it was a fairly dangerous opinion with fabrications that weren’t vetted by the editorial team
* it was disrespectful and dangerous to the safety of their employees of color. The safety of people should not be a partisan issue
* it compromised the reporting abilities of other arms of the NYT
Well, I do. We had a case in Germany a few years back where the police served some kind of no-knock warrant, the guy (a Hells Angel) thought they were from a rival gang, shouted at them and then shot at them. A Policeman died, the guy dropped his gun immediately after police identified themselves. The Case made the news later because the guy got acquitted of all charges regarding the killing [1] but that's only secondarily relevant here.
For me the main take-away from this should be that there's a difference between shooting back at night against a home invasion and shooting at the police. Just because the police see a situation where someone shoots back in a home invasion-scenario does in no way mean they can expect an intention to shoot at cops. Shooting back at invaders is legal, and the police should not react until they have ruled that out.
[1] I suspect that's a german source, sorry. http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/0,1518,795678,00.html#
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/business/new-york-times-o...
The editor in question also resigned.
Not saying it justifies the original publication, but I appreciate the way it was handled.
Note: Where I live, most young men, and some young women, have assault rifles at home. Cops still don't kill people. (might savoir-vivre have something to do with this juxtaposition?)
(speaking of refactoring tech debt, the Duke of Wellington was one of the signatories to an international treaty which may have helped inspire the "Monroe Doctrine". [flagged] discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23359754 )
The job of the justice system, and the police, is to keep non criminal people safe, all of them, even if it means not being able to catch a few criminals here and there. It's obviously not the case in the US though, just looking at wrongly convicted people gives you a good idea of what the US system is about [0]. This kind of shit should never ever happen, it's the very basis of any serious justice system.
Also, this is exactly why countries like France have laws preventing police interventions between 9pm and 6am (it obviously has exceptions, but even then they need a special authorisation). You don't storm people houses in the middle of the night and start shooting when the confused people you just woke up start panicking... seems like common sense to me
As far as I can tell you're legally allowed to own a gun and use it to defend yourself against intruders, you can't use this as a valid argument in that case. The only shocking thing here are the police tactics, not the fact that this dude defended himself.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_miscarriage_of_justice...
So I think that makes around 125-130 unarmed people killed by police. [1] says that there were 1,134 people killed that year by police.
125/1134 = 11%
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-...
The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the full narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open records. It looks like they only got the public narrative [1] which simply states “PIU Investigation” and are pretending to be shocked. In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not the initial incident report narrative.
The forced entry checkbox and injuries only have meaning in the context of an offense and “Death Investigation” isn’t a reportable offense or incident, it’s just a placeholder. When they have a finding (justifiable or criminal homicide) then they’ll either complete a supplement or generate a new incident which will need to have certain flags and drop-down options set correctly for reporting.
That any of this is being used as some sort of evidence of a cover-up is ridiculous.
[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc...
Having the British Army fire on and kill civilians in Northern Ireland was extremely controversial. Several incidents resulted in murder trials. Some of this is still going on. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49721166
> Even "peacekeeping" forces are going to return fire if fired upon.
My point is that there have been lots of places in the 20th century where troops have been specifically ordered not to do that without senior authorisation, because of the potential political impact of an escalation.
Or at the very least carefully identify who they are going to be shooting at, and provide a warning, rather than firing blindly into residential buildings.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser...
0: https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/prosecutors-drop-attempted-mur...
WP published various parts of the trove they deemed newsworthy, and ultimately won and accepted a Pulitzer for this.
Then the editorial board signed and published a statement that said some of what was released from the trove actually wasn't newsworthy and were reasonable and legal defense programs. The editorial board recommended that because of this Snowden should be charged. In the editorial itself they acknowledge that the illegal behavior that was discovered can't be used as a defense in court.
The WP was offered and accepted the responsibility to parse this trove and publish only what is newsworthy. They messed up and published a couple documents that weren't newsworthy. They never publish any kind of apology or correction for it, instead they indict their own source, and recommend he be charged for that!
There's an unprecedented level of malice and incompetence displayed here. Look at the revolt in the NYT newsroom about the Cotton op-ed, and compare to literally not a word said in opposition to the WP editorial (which was written and signed by the editorial board, unlike the Cotton op-ed). The WP is rotten throughout, and shouldn't be held in even the slightest regard as a newspaper when they use their position to destroy the protection of sources that journalists fought for so long to preserve.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...
In Kentucky, KRS 507.040 defines "Manslaughter in the second degree" (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...).
This is defined as:
> A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when he wantonly causes the death of another person...
A "wanton" state of mind in KY is defined in KRS 501.020 (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...
> A person acts wantonly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. A person who creates such a risk but is unaware thereof solely by reason of voluntary intoxication also acts wantonly with respect thereto.
Now, this quickly gets fact specific, but if the following acts are true:
- LMPD breached the house suddenly, and loudly
- LMPD breached the house late at night
- LMPD officers were wearing plain-clothes
- LMPD officers did not announce themselves (disputed)
I personally would find that the officers acted wantonly in a manner that would predictably created a serious risk of injury or death to themselves or bystanders. As such, given the statute and those 4 facts I would be willing to vote to convince on second-degree manslaughter in this case.
I'll note, again, that this is fact specific. The officers specifically claim to have loudly announced themselves. Walker and neighbors dispute that fact.
Some "amusing" notes (and by "amusing" I mean "horrifying" and/or "the entirety of the LMPD should be fired and prohibited from ever working for a law enforcement agency again"):
- "Forced Entry: N" (today I learned breaking down a door and shooting people is somehow not "forced entry")
- "Bias Motivation: None (No Bias)" (cough cough bullshit cough cough)
- "Public Narrative: PIU Investigation" (wow, real descriptive there)
Can't really comment on much else given that it's entirely devoid of information.
Breonna's case has the following disadvantages: many Americans are willing to give LEOs benefit of the doubt when there is no video, it's "the word of the police versus a suspected criminal", the police union's hitpiece[1] in the media, and the slow wheels of the legal ("justice") system to investigate the facts which are never fully known in the media within days of an incident.
[1] https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-presiden...