Say Her Name

 

Say Her Name

Breonna Taylor

One of our friends posted the other day that sometimes the law just does not give us what we need. She said that is the fault of the law and the law needs to be changed. She is right. AG Cameron said one thing the other day that I can agree with. He said (I'm paraphrasing) that sometimes the Criminal Code is insufficient to bring justice. It is hard to grasp but that is so.

According to the law it appears that the warrant was lawfully obtained although it contained erroneous information. In this the Metro Police said they will be instituting more careful oversight of the warrant process. Maybe that is enough, maybe not. A civilian witness testified that the police did knock to announce themselves. I don't know what the interval was between the announcement and the breaching but it is ludicrous to think that someone is awake at all hours to hear it. It seems apparent that more time is needed between announcement and breaching. Maybe no breaching at all. It was alleged that it was a “no knock” warrant but that appears to not have been so.

After breaching the man in the apartment opened fire on what he took to be intruders as is his right. The police returned fire as is their right under existing law. They are trained to fire until the threat is eliminated which usually means dead. In this case their fire was misdirected and the threat lived on but Breonna Taylor was eliminated.

Police almost everywhere enjoy limited immunity from prosecution for their actions. I can understand that but that should be more limited but it can't be more limited until their training changes and the rights of citizens are strengthened.

This is where “Defund the Police” comes in. Police have been gifted with military armaments and vehicles and use military tactics. This is wrong. Police are not military, they are not even para-military. They are citizens with the job of enforcing the law. Training must change to reinforce this ideal. The funding for para-military operations needs to be diverted to training social workers and other mental health professionals to attend to calls where deadly action may be required. All members of law enforcement need to be trained in de-escalation of tensions even if it means that they must back off and wait. Police must not be allowed to be something other than a regular citizen doing a dangerous job.

The tactics they use fall the heaviest on disadvantaged and minority populations. They would not use the same tactics in a high rent or gated community. That is wrong and should be corrected. That is discriminatory application of the law.

Often police recruits are people who only want the badge and gun so they can bully people and those recruits need to be weeded out. It is obvious that we need new codes for police conduct and we need them now but you can bet when that effort gets underway there will be those who cry that the police need those abusive techniques in order to protect themselves. I say they can protect themselves and the citizens they serve by being better trained. In addition, they need to know that when they fail their training and use deadly force inappropriately they will be subject to the weight of the law like everyone else.

Some say the police are outgunned and that may currently be true but that can be solved by instituting some common sense gun laws including registration, restrictions on who can carry a weapon and what type and (in my opinion) by requiring insurance on each weapon sold just like we do vehicles.

Breonna Taylor should not have died and a grave injustice has been committed with no one being held responsible for her violent death. As a nation, we cannot allow that to happen. Yes, the AG was right. The criminal code has proven insufficient to bring justice and we have seen it happen time after time after time. And we have seen it happen in more significant numbers in minority populations. That should cause someone in power to recoil in horror. The President (who couldn't care less) says that we kill more white people than we do African-Americans and that is true but we kill African-Americans in far larger percentages that we do others.

My Take is this. Tyler Childers asks us what we would do under similar circumstances. We should ask that of ourselves before we condemn Black Lives Matter.