Breonna Taylor case shows need to abolish police
On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot dead by the Louisville, Ky., police department while she slept in her own bed. Predictably, no officers have been charged in her murder. Black people being murdered by the police has always been legal. Policing is inherently violent, and violence is incapable of indicting itself.
The only justice for Black lives is a world in which the carceral state is abolished once and for all.
Connecticut is no stranger to the violence of policing. On May 9, 2017, 15-year-old Jayson Negron was shot and killed by Bridgeport police officer James Boulay. On December 14, 2017 20-year old Zoe Dowdell was shot and killed after five New Britain police officers fired 28 rounds on the car he was driving with two passengers. On April 20, 2019, 19-year old Anthony Vega Cruz was shot and killed by Wethersfield police officer Layau Eulizier. On January
15, 2020, 19-year old Mubarak Soulemane was shot seven times in West Haven by state trooper Brian North through a closed car window. No officers have been charged with wrongdoing in any of these cases, and all remain gainfully employed besides Eulizier, who resigned in April 2020.
These are just four cases of the 21 people killed by Connecticut police in the last five years. In all four of these cases, officers used lethal force in an attempt to retrieve or protect property. The state legitimizes police wielding violence in response to traffic violations and stolen cars. They decide whether or not our lives are worth as much as an insurance claim. In truth, the system
we attempt to survive was born as a site of violence and injustice.
Even if these officers were charged, tried and found guilty, justice would not be served. In a just world, Jayson would get to grow up and be 19. The only reason we would know Zoe’s name would be because of his flourishing music career. Mubarak would get his mental health needs met, surrounded by the family and friends who miss him dearly. Anthony and his girlfriend would enjoy the rest of their date and make it home safe. Breonna Taylor would wake up the next morning and do what she loved, serving her community as an EMT.
The very existence of police and prisons is an injustice. The United States is a colo
nial structure that has normalized police occupying Black and brown communities, diverting resources and serving the ruling class. It is our duty to reject the very notion that justice can be found in a state that arms its overseers and criminalizes revolution. A world without police murder is a world without police.
This world will never exist without abolition of the systems designed to murder with impunity. Abolition means we will: fully defund the police, demilitarize communities, remove police from schools, free people from jails and prisons, repeal laws that criminalize survival, invest in community self-governance, provide safe housing for everyone, and invest in care, not cops.
Abolition is not a promise for a world without harm, but it is a refusal of the state fix which is clearly not working. When we defund the police, it will end the looting of community programs to fund occupation. When we demilitarize communities, we will no longer live in fear of lethal force and surveillance. When we remove police from schools, we will no longer legitimize the criminalization of Black and brown students. When we free incarcerated people, we will help make communities whole through restorative justice. When we repeal laws that criminalize survival, we will empower our most vulnerable community members. When we invest in community self-governance, provide safe housing for everyone and invest in care, we will build communities equipped to take care of themselves and each other.
Abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore said, “Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.” There is a revolution going on, that is inviting us all to build and sustain this world. What happened to Breonna, and what will not happen to the officers who killed her, is not a glitch in the criminal justice system.
The movement for Black lives will not be aided by systems that have no interest in justice. You cannot reform white supremacy. We have to take it apart.