Houstonians call for charges in Taylor case
Rally honors Kentucky woman fatally shot by police as she slept
Breonna Taylor wasn’t safe in her own home.
The EMT was killed by police officers during an apparent botched drug raid on March 13 while she slept in her Louisville, Ky. home.
“We need to honor her life and uplift her name, because her life is just as important as anyone who has been murdered by the police,” said Shelly Baker, the grassroots organizer of a Friday protest at Discovery Green that called for justice for Taylor and national police reform.
Several hundred people turned out in downtown Houston to honor Taylor on what would have been her 27th birthday, joining other protests across the nation as concern about racial injustice has intensified since police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn. more than a week ago. Floyd will be buried in Houston next week.
Officers shot Taylor eight times while they were executing a noknock search warrant on her home. Police officials said they suspected that a man involved in a drug ring was sending packages to the house.
No criminal charges have been filed against the three officers involved in Taylor’s killing. They were put on administrative leave. Protesters on Friday called for their arrests.
Baker said the group is calling for a national ban on no-knock search warrants. Houston police stopped the practice in the wake
of the deadly botched Harding Street raid in 2019.
Akayla Jackson, who drove from Lake Jackson to demand justice for Taylor, said that as the Black Lives Matter movement continues to grow, it’s important to fight for the rights of the entire community.
“It’s not just black men,” said Jackson. “It’s black women, black children and people in the black trans community.”
They pointed out that Friday’s crowd was much smaller than Tuesday’s march for Floyd, the former Jack Yates High School student.
“Where is everyone today?” one activist asked the crowd.
Houston activist Roni Burren
told the crowd the fight for black liberation began with black women like Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer and Houston’s Barbara Jordan.
“Black women were on the forefront of the movement,” she said. “We need to make sure black women’s lives are not forgotten. We wanna make sure that the Breonna Taylors of the world are never forgotten.”
Araselios Harris, of Houston, said she’s glad police brutality against black people is getting national attention now, but she hopes it doesn’t lose momentum.
“It’s important to remind people that this is not just something that we do for one week and forget it,” she said. “You face this forever. We grow up with this. We walk outside of our houses and feel oppression.”