‘ALWAYS US
Breonna’s mom lambasts Ky. top lawman, sez he was
Breonna Taylor’sTaylors mother, too emotional to speak at a Friday news conference, said in a statement read by a family member that she never had faith that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron would “do the right thing” for her daughter and vowed to continue fighting for justice.
“I knew he was too inexperienced to do a job of this caliber. I knew he had already chosen to be on the wrong side of the law,” Tamika Palmer wrote in a statement readd out loud by Taylor’s aunt, Bianca Austin, in front of a crowd of rriilleed-dup supporters at Louisville’s Jefferson Square Park.
“What I had hoped is that he knew he had the power to do the right thing, that he had the power to start the healing of this city, that he had the power to help mend over 400 years of oppression,” she said. “What he helped me realize is that it will always be us against them, that we are not safe when it comes to them.”
The 34-year-old Cameron, whoh is Bllack,k was electedld attorney general in 2019.
The two women appeared before supporters Friday along with several attorneys representing the family. One of them, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, fumed over Wednesday’s decision not to charge any officers with killing 26year-old Taylor, and demanded Cameron release the grand jury transcript in the case.
“What kind of sham grand jury proceeding was this?” he said, referring to Cameron’s decision to pursue a wanton endangerment charge for only one off theh threeh cops whoh fifiredd their weapons during the botched March 13 no-knock raidraid onon Tayor’sTayors apartment.apartment. Tay-Tay lor, an EMT studying to be a nurse, was inside and unarmed.
“Did he present any evidence on Breonna Taylor’s behalf?” Crump said. “Or did he make a unilateral decision to put his thumb on the scale of justice to try to exonerate and justify the killing of Breonna Taylor by these police officers, and doing so, making sure that Breonna Taylor’s family never got their day in court?”
A Jeffersonff County granndd jury this week indicted formmer Detective Brett Hankison — not for shooting Taylor, whicwhich Cameron said he didn’t do, but for blindly firing his weapon into her apartment building and putting the lives of her three white neighbors in jeopardy.
“Breonna Taylor’s entire family is heartbroken, devastated, outraged and confused and bewildered, as are all of us, as to what Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron presented to the grand jury,” Crump said before a chorus of
protesters chanthing, “Releasel the transcript.”
Cameron detailed his team’s findings in a news conference this week, but he has not released the paperwork or the report his office provided to the jury.
Taylor’s case drew nationwide attention and Wednesday’s announcement was met with outrage from activists, politicians and celebrities who had been calling for charges against the officers. It also triggered a fresh wave of protests in Louisville and across the country.
Thhe two cops whoh diddd shooth Taylor, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were not charged. Cameron said the pair was “justified” in their use of deadly force because Taylor’s boyfriend, licensed gun owner Kenneth Walker, believing the house was being robbed, fired the first shot and struck Mattingly in the thigh. Walker’s lawyer disputes that, saying Mattingly may have been hit by friendly fire .
Mattingly, “the first and only officer to enter the residence,” allegedly saw the couple standing at theh endd off theh hhall,ll withh Walker “holding a gun, arms extended in a shooting stance,” Cameron told reporters. Mat-Mat tingly fired six shots while Cosgrove fired 16 times, including the shot that killed Taylor, the attorney general said.
Crump said it was “ironic” that the only charges in the case were against an officer whose bullets missed Taylor while the cops who “mutilated” her body will not face their day in court. Crump and his team also questioned whether Cameron only allowed the one neighbor who clalims to hhave hheardd theh officers knocking on Taylor’s apartment door that night testifytify before the grand jury.
In her statement, Palmer said it wasn’t just Cameron who “failed” her daughter, but an entire legal system built against justice for Black people.
“When I speak on it I’m considered an angry Black woman,” she said. “But know this, I am an angry Black woman. I’m not angry for the reasons that you’d like me to be, but angry because Black women keep dying at the hands of police officers.”