Who believed a speedy vaccine doable? He did.
Slaoui feels effective, safe medication against COVID-19 is coming soon
PHILADELPHIA – In 2009, a flu pandemic was racing across the world when a venture capital firm that backs health care companies held its annual retreat. The meeting was a who’s who of pharmaceutical and biotechnology executives – the top leaders of the top companies in the world.
One man pulled together a group of his peers and issued a directive: “We are going to work together to make something happen here.”
That scene came to mind when the Trump administration asked Jeremy Levin, head of the industry’s Biotechnology Innovation Organization, who should run America’s COVID-19 vaccine development effort.
“Moncef Slaoui,” he answered without hesitation.
Slaoui, 61, a Moroccan-born retired vaccine developer and drug company executive, brought his colleagues together before, so it seemed logical to tap him again.
Slaoui’s name came up repeatedly in the spring, when Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was looking for someone from the private sector to help lead Operation Warp Speed – an unprecedented and audacious effort to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine by year’s end.
The scientific community was skeptical. The fastest vaccine development on record was for the mumps, and it took four years. There was no way to make a safe, effective vaccine in seven months, many said. Something would have to be compromised.
Slaoui thought he could pull it off. In many ways, he’d been preparing for the challenge his entire life.
A political activist in his youth, he spent nearly 30 years at pharmaceutical giant Glaxosmithkline, 27 of them working on a vaccine for malaria. He brought 14 vaccines to market and rose
and 68% were for addresses in the West End, a section of Louisville with predominantly Black neighborhoods. Several of the warrants remain sealed by a judge.
State Rep. Attica Scott, sponsor of Breonna’s Law, which would ban noknock search warrants statewide, said the findings are another example of overpolicing in Louisville’s Black communities.
“Policing has historically, and continues to be, racially disparate,” she said. “It’s not mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually healthy for people to live in fear of law enforcement or to cringe when they see them coming.”
The warrants are a fraction of the thousands of search warrants the LMPD serves each year. In 2019, the department conducted more than 3,000 court-authorized searches.
Supporters of no-knocks said they help protect officers searching for potentially dangerous suspects who might be armed.
In 17 of the no-knock warrants the Courier Journal analyzed, LMPD officers cited a history of violence or the possibility of weapons as the reason for the request – arguing the element of surprise was crucial so police didn’t walk into an ambush.
Searches in which police knock, announce and quickly break down a door can cause as much harm as no-knock entries, Kraska said.
In October 2018, a Louisville SWAT team with a search warrant used a battering ram and a flash-bang grenade to get the Daugherty family out of their West End home, so police could search for marijuana.
The family’s lawsuit in 2019 alleged police didn’t have probable cause for the warrant, which was based on “materially false statements.”
“In some instances, I’m sure they found whatever they were looking for,” said Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League and a frequent critic of LMPD tactics. “Think about the times when they haven’t found anything and the trauma on those families.”
In a statement, Mayor Greg Fischer said he expects all city employees to be committed to fairness and equity. He said he supported banning no-knock warrants.
“The danger which no-knock warrants pose to both civilians and police officers is greater than any benefit,” Fischer spokeswoman Jean Porter said. “The top-to-bottom review of LMPD that is underway will look at current policies, procedures and protocols LMPD uses.”
The Courier Journal found Black residents have been disproportionately targeted for no-knock searches the past two years: 23 of the 28 suspects LMPD identified in the analyzed noknock warrants were Black, about 82%.
Seventy percent of Jefferson County’s 750,000 residents are white.
Black residents also were disproportionately targeted for search warrants without no-knock provisions, the Courier Journal found.
Ashlea Burr and Mario Daugherty and their three children live in a part of the city targeted more frequently in LMPD’S search warrants.
They can vouch for the terror they can generate.
On the morning of Oct. 26, 2018, SWAT officers arrived at the door.
Within moments, officers broke the glass on their front door, busted it open with a battering ram and shouted they were police with a search warrant. Weapons drawn, officers threw in a flash-bang grenade.
Smoke filled the home as the family screamed.
“We were confused and first thought we may be getting robbed,” Burr and Daugherty wrote, through their attorney, to the Courier Journal. “We were scared and kept thinking that one of our family members was going to be killed.”
As police called out family members from the front, one of the 14-year-old girls ran through a back door. SWAT officers in the alley pointed weapons at her and told her to get on the ground.
Burr and Daugherty sued the city in October 2019.
Though the search warrant did not contain a no-knock provision, body camera footage shows police essentially treated it as one – breaking in the door at the same time they announced themselves, giving the family no time to react.
“Nobody should have their home raided by 18 SWAT officers with assault rifles pointed at their children, especially people who don’t represent any danger,” Burr and Daugherty said in their statement.