BreonnaTaylor’s family gets $12M
Louisville OKs $12M for death in police raid, pledges reforms
Louisville officials also agreed to institute reforms aimed at preventing future deaths by officers.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After months of protests that turned Breonna Taylor’s name into a national slogan against police violence, city officials agreed to pay her family $12 million and institute reforms aimed at preventing future deaths by officers.
The settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the mother of Taylor, a young Blackwoman who was killed by white police officers in a botched raid in March, was announced Tuesday by her legal team and city officials.
As protesters drummed outside City Hall, Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, was joined by other relatives and advocates wearing black masks inscribed with Taylor’s name in white lettering.
Her family’s lawyer Ben Crump said the settlement ensured that Taylor’s “life wouldn’t be swept under the rug like so many other Black women in America who have been killed by police, marginalized.”
The agreement they reached was relatively quick compared with other cases of police shootings, which have often dragged through court for years. Most of all, it was unusual because of the range of reforms — a dozen in all — that the embattled city agreed to adopt in an effort to quell the protests that have left the downtown boarded up.
The policing changes would require more oversight by top commanders and make mandatory safeguards that were common practice but, for reasons that are unclear, were not followed the night of the March 13 raid.
“Based on at least 20 years of tracking these types of cases, I’ve never seen something like this,” said Christopher 2X, a community organizer who was the first person Taylor’s family turned to after her death. “The bottom line is the monetary amount, combined with the reforms, is unprecedented for us. In the past, itwas monetary or nothing, and usually the city would fight you for years.”
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, died after her boyfriend said he mistook police officers for an intruder, as they rammed in the door of her apartment after midnight to execute a search warrant. He fired his handgun, striking an officer, setting off a response in which a torrent of bullets sliced through Taylor’s apartment and two adjoining ones, leaving her bleeding in her hallway.
There was no effort to render her aid, as the officers outside scrambled to get an ambulance for the wounded officer.
The protests began locally and have grown in volume and intensity. They have ravaged the downtown of Kentucky’s largest city, where businesses and government offices are boarded up. And the youngwoman’s death has burrowed deep into the national conversation: Both former first lady Michelle Obama and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris called out her name at the Democratic National Convention last month, and WNBA players have placed her name onto their jerseys.
The top demand of the protesters who gather nightly in a downtown square has been that criminal charges be brought against the three white officers who shot into Taylor’s home. But because the officers were fired upon first, legal experts say their actions may be protected under Kentucky’s statute allowing police to use lethal force in self-defense. For that reason, they say it is unlikely that a criminal inquiry underway by the state’s attorney general will result in charges against at least two of the officers, who were standing directly in front of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, when he opened fire first.
The same legal experts believe that only a charge of wanton endangerment could be brought against the third officer, whom the police department fired, citing reckless conduct. He left the formation at the door, ran into the parking lot and began firing into the young woman’s window and patio door.
Months before the agreement was reached, the city passed “Breonna’s Law,” which banned no-knock search warrants. That was the type of warrant issued for the search of Taylor’s apartment, allowing police to punch in the door without warning. It was one of five such warrants carried out the same night that targeted a criminal drug ring operated by Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, a convicted drug dealer who had repeatedly been seen at her apartment in the months before the raid.
Among the reforms are a requirement that commanding officers review and give written approval for all search warrants.
The department has also agreed to overhaul how simultaneous search warrants are conducted, likely a result of the manner in which the five warrants were obtained for Taylor’s residence and four others that police say were used as “trap houses” by her exboyfriend.