By Mona Austin
The FBI has federally charged all 4 police officers connected to the death of Louisville, KY woman Breonna Taylor, finding ttat they violated her Civil Rights. Taylor's case made national headlines when she was killed in her home during a police raid in pursuit of her boyfriend. Littered with procedural errors, Attorney Benjamin Crump led the repeatedly prolonged case to conviction.
"This is a historic day," Crump said in a press conference held at the site of a Taylor memorial. “This is a day when Black women saw equal justice in America."
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday former LMPD detectives Joshua Jaynes and Brett Hankison, and current LMPD Sgt. Kyle Meany and detective Kelly Goodlett would be charged with Taylor's death. They were charged with unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force, and obstruction offenses.
In March of 2020 the squad of officers killed Taylor after they barged into her apartment unannounced looking for a male suspect who had already been detained. They were conducting a drug investigation but did not find any drugs in her home. Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT worker did not have a prior criminal history. Thinking they were being burglarized, her live-in boyfriend shot one of the officers and is facing attempted murder charges.
The story struck a nerve among many celebrities from Beyonce to Atlanta Housewife Porsha Williams. Beyonce wrote a letter to the state's Attorney General. Williams was arrested at a protest el on bealf of te victim. Beyonce reminded the AG that it has been 3 months since Taylor's death and the officer who shot and killed her has not been arrested.
The senseless death of Breonna Taylor caused activists to galvanize to ensure that deaths of Black women would not be minimized in the struggle for criminal justice reform. Taylor's name was one of many Black women whose tragic stories were lined ot te "say my name" ash tag spurred by te deat of Sandra Bland, a Black woman who recorded 39 seconds of her encounter and lost her life in an escalation with a Texas state trooper. Although she later died in prison, Bland's quick thinking sparked a trend of people videotaping police encounters, which later served as evidence that saved lives in some instances.
Taylor's supporters kept her memory alive amid the legal trials of other major cases where Blacks had been killed by police. The rallying cry for justice in her case was a reminder that Black women too were wrongfully murdered by people wearing the badge in America.