--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Fall is here. Might be time to find some nice new pieces you can wear again and again. With Saks Fifth Avenue, it can be a breeze to shop for your personal style, like maybe a relaxed Prada blazer or Gucci loafers that are great for both work and the weekend.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find inspiration for your personal style every day at Saks Fifth Avenue. Months ago, we brought you an episode titled Justice for Breonna Taylor. Tessa Duvall, a reporter at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, explained what we knew at that point in June about a police shooting that killed an unarmed Black woman in her own apartment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of questions were unanswered at the time, but Tessa joined us again this morning because we had some big developments this week. We got an answer on Wednesday. The Jefferson County Grand Jury charges as follows. Out of the three officers who fired their weapons at Breonna Taylor's apartment back in March, only one of them has been indicted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was former Louisville detective Brett Hankison. Count one, wanton endangerment in the first degree. That's a class D felony that can carry between one and five years in prison. Count two, wanton endangerment in the first degree. But as the judge was reading the counts. Count three, wanton endangerment in the first degree.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She was saying the initials of the residents who were endangered by these shots. He wantonly shot a gun into the apartment occupied by initials CE. And none of those initials, we noticed pretty quickly, were BT for Breonna Taylor. Occupied by initials CN. Or KW for Kenny Walker.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Occupied by initials ZF. So we figured out that while there were these three counts of one endangerment, they weren't actually for endangering Breonna. They were for shots that endangered her neighbors. So the grand jury didn't find any wrongdoing with how the police approached Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But they did find that the police recklessly endangered the lives of Breonna Taylor's neighbors. Yes. So when Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is in his first term in office, spoke about this, he explained that... Our investigation showed and the grand jury agreed that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in the return of deadly fire after having been fired upon by Kenneth Walker.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That self-defense response didn't play out with Brett Hankison to the same degree because he was not firing from that doorway. Detective Hankison fired his weapon from a outside sliding glass door and through a bedroom window. That's why he was fired from the police department over the summer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's why he's facing these reckless endangerment charges. Some bullets traveled through apartment four and into apartment three. A neighboring apartment behind her. Three residents of apartment three were at home, including a male, a pregnant female, and a child.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's why he's facing charges and the other two officers aren't. Just so I can make sure I had this clear, the attorney general said that this one officer, Detective Hankinson, who was further away, he wasn't firing in self-defense, but the other two officers were. Essentially, yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He said that... According to Kentucky law, the use of force by Mattingly and Cosgrove was justified to protect themselves. Because these officers were, in his opinion, acting in self-defense, that homicide charges shouldn't apply here. How many shots did the cops fire in total, do we know?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We knew that Brett Hankison was accused of firing 10 rounds blindly from outside the apartment. and Attorney General Daniel Cameron said that he fired 10 times in total. So that's six from Mattingly, 10 from Hankison. And then we also learned that Detective Cosgrove fired a total of 16 times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So more than 30 shots in total from these three officers were fired into Breonna Taylor's apartment, with several of them going into apartment next to hers and an apartment upstairs. And how many shots were fired by Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, to set off this firefight?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kenneth Walker fired one shot. Yeah. The last time we spoke, we spent a lot of time focused on the no-knock warrant that had been issued to these police officers. Have we learned anything more there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we know from court records that police sought and were given a warrant with a no-knock clause on it. Sergeant Mattingly, based on the testimony that we had heard he had given to investigators, he says that they are saying, police come to the door, police search warrant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Banged on the door no response Banged on it again no response At that point we started announcing ourselves please please come to the door Please we have a search warrant Based on Kenneth Walker statements that he gave to police he said they heard a knocking They heard this pounding.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But they had no idea who it was from inside the apartment. So it was a loud boom at the door. First thing she said was, who is it? No response. So we're like, what the heck? We both get up, start putting on clothes. Another knock at the door.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She's like, who is it? Loud at the top of her lungs. No response. You know, that sets up a discrepancy. You know, did Kenneth Walker know he was firing at police when this all began and triggered this series of events?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Daniel Cameron said definitively that... Evidence shows that officers both knocked and announced their presence at the apartment. He reached that conclusion based on statements made by the officers and one neighbor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In other words, the warrant was not served as a no-knock warrant. That has not sat well with a lot of people. Taylor's family attorney, Ben Crump, says that's not true. Everybody there said they never heard the police identify themselves.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Journalists from local to national have, you know, been all over that apartment complex talking to neighbors. And the neighbors are saying, we didn't hear anything. We didn't know it was police. You know, they've even talked to neighbors who said, well, we called the police when we heard the shooting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We didn't know the shooting was the police. And so, you know, attorneys for Breonna's family and journalists are confused as to why one neighbor and his statements carry more weight than, you know, 10 plus other neighbors who did not hear police.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does this verdict gel with the settlement that Breonna Taylor's family received, I think, last week? What we heard from the attorney general and the grand jury on Wednesday is the result of a criminal investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But last week, we saw Breonna Taylor's family and attorneys announce alongside city leaders that they had resolved a civil lawsuit for the wrongful death of Breonna Taylor. That was huge. I mean, it was a $12 million settlement, which is the largest police payout in Louisville history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's also one of the largest for a police shooting in the nation. But, you know, protesters look at this $12 million settlement and they say, one, her family deserves every single cent of that and more. And people say, why is the city paying $12 million if those officers didn't do anything wrong?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And of course, protesters have been calling for criminal charges against these officers in the death of Breonna Taylor for months now. Does this indictment mean that will never happen? There is still a federal investigation surrounding Breonna Taylor's death, and the FBI is looking into how the warrant was obtained, what happened that night.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're looking for civil rights violations. So it's not over yet, even though, obviously, like you said, protesters are really unhappy about this. You know, the rallying cry, the commentary from celebrities, the t-shirts, the memes, the slogan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tyler Hero scored in double figures every game this postseason? He's been putting in work for a young fella. But it'd also be a great day to arrest the cops that murdered Breonna Taylor. It's all been arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. Arrest the cops! Arrest the cops!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Daniel Cameron made it very clear that that's not going to happen. That's not, you know, one endangerment was the charge they were going to go with for one officer. What was the reaction in Louisville after this verdict came down on Wednesday?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a lot of grief. There are people who are mourning. There are also people who are mad as hell. Breonna Taylor! Breonna Taylor! Who feel like this is just another example of police getting away with killing a black person.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so, you know, we did see protests the last couple of nights. The city is under a curfew. The National Guard is here. and on Wednesday night two officers were shot while you know out working the protests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Robert Schroeder, Chief of Police, Louisville Metro Police Department. At about 8 30 tonight our officers were called to the area of Brooklyn College, shots rang out and two of our officers were shot. Both officers are currently undergoing treatment at University Hospital.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One is in alert and stable. The other officer is currently undergoing surgery and stable. Thankfully, their injuries were not life-threatening, and they're both expected to recover. But it's really like the city is undergoing this collective trauma.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How has Breonna Taylor's family responded? I spoke to Breonna Taylor's family attorneys yesterday who recounted the moment that Tamika Palmer learned that no one was being charged for her daughter's death.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And both attorneys I spoke to just described it as her just, you know, immediately just breaking down, just falling apart, that, you know, she couldn't speak. You know the attorneys have consistently been raising the point of how can you endanger the neighbors but not endanger Breonna That what they can make sense of and that what they mad about
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is absolutely not what Breonna Taylor's family wanted to hear. They were very clear from the get-go that they wanted officers held criminally responsible for Breonna Taylor's death, and they didn't get that. More in a minute.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos-Furram. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fabio Licinius, you report on race here at Vox. Tell me, you know, the Justice for Breonna Taylor movement, what exactly did that movement mean by justice? What did people want to see?
--:-- Fabio Licinius: Yeah, I think what's been fascinating about the movement for Breonna Taylor's life and the movement for justice for Breonna Taylor over the past couple months is that it meant very different things to different people.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: So there were some people who were saying, arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor, right? For them, justice was seeing Brett Hankinson being taken away in handcuffs and seeing the other two officers who also fired their guns that night be taken away in handcuffs.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: But then there were some people who were like, justice doesn't mean seeking retribution, seeking punishment within the current system as it stands. So people were saying, actually, we need to stop centering Breonna Taylor in this, and we actually need to see how this is just part of a bigger movement to say there's so much more work to be done in the criminal justice system.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: Whether that's reforming it, defunding the police, or just abolishing the system altogether. So it ran the gamut from actually put these cops in handcuffs to get rid of cops altogether.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: But was anyone out there clamoring for a wanton endangerment charge for just one of the police officers? Absolutely not. I don't think that anyone got what they were looking for in this situation.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: But I think that maybe some people were more shocked than others, right? So the people who were actually still looking for the system to produce some kind of justice were shocked and confused, whereas the people who were already divested from it were like, this is what we expected.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: So, for example, since March 13th, according to the Washington Post's police tracker, more than 80 Black people have been killed at the hands of police. And a study from the mapping police violence database found that 99% of killings by police between the years of 2013 and 2019 haven't even resulted in officers being charged with a crime.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: So this happens a lot, and it's pretty rare for police officers to be charged. Has there been justice in other cases that have gotten a lot of attention this summer, like George Floyd or Jacob Blake or Rayshard Brooks?
--:-- Fabio Licinius: Yeah, I'd say in the case of George Floyd, where a white officer from Minneapolis basically kneeled on his neck, he got charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: And in the cases of Rayshard Brooks and Jacob Blake, who were also shot by police this summer, we don't have any decisions yet. But historically speaking, I don't know that it would make a lot of sense for protesters to look forward to justice in those cases either.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: Where has the discussion in this country about abolishing the police or defunding the police left off? I mean, there were a lot of initial promises and pledges and reforms after the death of George Floyd, but now, I mean, the most conspicuous conversation that seems to be happening around it is the president trying to say Joe Biden wants to abolish the police, and Joe Biden saying, actually, no, I don't.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: I'd say in the beginning, we saw a lot of attention on the Black Lives Matter movement. We saw public opinion shift, right? So many Americans are now saying that they believe that racism is a problem in America. They believe that funds should be taken away from police and given to other essential community services like social workers mental health care workers
--:-- Fabio Licinius: When we starting to look at what happening at individual police departments we seeing much movement on the defund front So for example, in Louisville, where Breonna Taylor was killed, activists who were calling for the defunding of police, they have not seen any wins on that front.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: We have seen like the Louisville Metro Council ban no-knock warrants. And we also saw the Kentucky Attorney General say that he's going to launch a task force following this decision to basically investigate the way that warrants are applied for and the way in which they're executed.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: And that's something that people are saying is just, it's not enough. We also saw with the $12 million settlement that Louisville announced before the grand jury's decision, a list of police reforms that they wanted to begin to put into action. And those included, you know, giving police officers credits for living in low-income neighborhoods or encouraging police officers to do community service.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: But those are just so far from the funding that activists are calling for. And outside Kentucky, outside Louisville? And outside Louisville, I'd say the movement is just about the same, right?
--:-- Fabio Licinius: We've seen like some school districts, for example, in Portland and their contracts with police departments. We've seen, like in Rochester, the mayor following the killing of Daniel Prude or the release of that video say that she failed the city and she's going to start an effort to basically reallocate funding to social workers who can basically help police officers who get calls related to mental health.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: New York State's Attorney General is now making a decision about when to publicly release body camera footage in the case of police-involved deaths. Daniel Prude died on March 23rd, but footage of his killing wasn't released until months later.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: So it sounds like what we ended up with is a patchwork of police reforms across the country. We didn't have a sort of national police reform reimagination. We just had sort of cities that have issues with police violence against black people second guessing and reconsidering their policies.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: Is that fair? That's definitely fair to say, especially when we look at, you mentioned Joe Biden before. His plan is to actually increase funding to police because he believes that one of the strongest avenues to fixing policing is community policing, right? Police being out on the streets, having positive interactions with civilians.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: But the movement is definitely far from over because I think this year we just started just saying things that have never been said so casually in public, right? This year we see people saying systemic racism exists. We see people saying that we need to rethink policing.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: And I think that the fact that these terms, these phrases are just entering people's vocabulary means that this is only a start. Breonna Taylor's death also shows us that Black women especially don't receive justice under the American criminal justice system.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: One of Breonna Taylor's attorneys, Ben Crump, from the very beginning, basically highlighted the fact that Breonna Taylor's case got more attention because people saw the death of George Floyd and rallied around that. And so her name basically jumped into popular discussions following the death of George Floyd.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: I also think this moment just shows that the system is working the way that it was designed. No officers were indicted in her killing. Brett Hankinson's indictment was for the fact that he shot through the walls and the bullets went through Breonna Taylor's apartment and into her neighbor's apartment.
--:-- Fabio Licinius: So his indictment, again, just had nothing to do with the fact that Breonna Taylor was shot dead in her apartment. What do we want? Justice! And when do we want it? No! What do we want? Justice! And when do we want it? No!
--:-- Fabio Licinius: What do we want? Justice! And when do we want it? No! If we don't get it, shut it down! If we don't get it, shut it down! If we don't get it, shut it down! Shut it, we don't get it! Shut it down! Shut it, we don't get it! Shut it down!
--:-- Fabio Licinius: You can read Fabiola's writing on Breonna Taylor's case at Vox.com. Tessa Duvall has a newsletter dedicated to Breonna Taylor's case you can find it over at the Courier Journal's website you can also find a link to it over at Today Explained on Twitter we are at today underscore explained
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.
