jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 23, 2020 3:12 pm
The Louisville DA announcement was actually quite predictable. One officer charged for reckless endangerment, was a small surprise and to me looks like they needed to throw one of the officers under the bus to look like they were really being fair., having taken (justifiably) so much heat already. The civil settlement a couple weeks ago told you all you needed to know to predict this outcome.
Cameron's job was clearly PR. The actual useful information he provided was very little. Question remains about whether there really was a knock. Police witness is not a very good one. My bigger issue is how the two COPs fire 22 shots (I believe) hitting the woman who did nothing wrong 6 times, the shooter either once or nonce, COPs spraying bullets all over the apartment. This is not reckless endangerment? The COPs have changed their story a number of times over the months they have been screwing around. They continue to cover up. This is not primarily about racism, it is about COPs and city authorities covering up. Same old, same old.
If you are white and think this could not happen to you - you are wrong, very wrong!
If I'm not mistaken, it's pretty apparent that a knock occurred (boyfriend as well as other witnesses said so, boyfriend being particularly credible) but whether there was an announcement of who it was blasting in the door right after is not so sure. Boyfriend says he didn't hear them announce themselves, other witnesses, except one, didn't hear them...did the one witness hear what no one else did? possible.
It's a travesty, but I'm not sure whether the issue was as much these officers in specific as the entire process needing reform.
It sounds like that DA didn't ask the grand jury for a direct charge of causing the death of Taylor of any of the officers, and it looks incredibly bad that the DA failing to bring direct charges was the darling of the GOP Trump Convention and took all these months to bring us to this point.
So, the opposite of engendering trust.
However, the officers involved were not those who sought and obtained a shoddy no-knock warrant and thus were executing on what they thought was a legitimate action, then returned fire when one of them was shot. So, a difficult case to hang specifically on these officers, albeit their wildly shooting so many times was atrocious.
This goes back to systematic racism endemic in the policy set of how law enforcement and judicial system approaches such situations in the first place. No knock, forced entry warrants because of suspected drug trafficking? without even assurance that the person who may or may not be guilty of such is even there? Is this really necessary in situations where there is no imminent physical harm to a victim on premises or a terrorist threat?
Yes, this
can happen to a white household, but let's take a look at where such warrants are issued, and how police approach those situations. Let's look at what we criminalize and how we can deescalate the violence of such.