The grand jury found no evidence to warrant indictments against the two officers who were directly involved in the shooting, although they did bring an indictment for wanton endangerment against a third officer who was outside the building. The mob has deemed this inadequate and have taken their dissatisfaction out on their community in the usual fashion.
As National Review's Andrew McCarthy observes, however, their belief that justice has been denied is simply not supported by the facts of the case.
Anyone interested in this tragic episode is encouraged to read McCarthy's entire column from which I've excerpted the portion which describes the events surrounding the actual shooting. I've edited it slightly for clarity:
On March 13, after working, Breonna met her boyfriend Kenneth Walker for dinner. They returned to her apartment where they watched television, and she went to sleep after midnight.This was certainly an awful tragedy, but neither of the officers did anything that violated any law or police procedures. As a result, the grand jury, on the basis of the evidence provided by the state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, an African American, refused to bring an indictment against them.
At about 12:40 a.m., the police, led by Sergeant Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, knocked on the door and announced themselves as police. Taylor and Walker were startled out of their sleep. Walker, a licensed owner of a nine-millimeter Glock, says he did not know it was the police at the door and speculated that it might be Breonna's former boyfriend and convicted drug dealer Jamarcus Glover breaking in.
For their part, the police expected that Ms. Taylor would be alone — they had not seen Walker enter the dwelling with her.
It was dark and there was a long hallway between the bedroom and the front door. There was screaming. Walker fired as Mattingly came through the door, striking him in the leg and severely wounding him. Mattingly and Cosgrove returned fire into the hallway in the general direction of where they believed the shooter was.
When the smoke cleared, Walker was unharmed, but Taylor had been struck six times. FBI ballistics experts eventually determined that Cosgrove fired the fatal shot.
Meantime, a third officer, Detective Brett Hankison, who was in the parking lot outside the apartment, began firing when the commotion, which he could not have seen, began. He sprayed the patio and a window with ten bullets — irresponsibly, to be sure, but fortunately without harming anyone.
Hankison, who had a spotty disciplinary record in almost 20 years as a cop, was terminated when police officials judged that his conduct during the raid shocked the conscience.
McCarthy's column goes on to describe Taylor's involvement with Glover and why the police were at her apartment in the first place and closes with this:
What happened to Breonna Taylor was a calamity. That is why the city of Louisville just paid $12 million dollars to settle the wrongful death lawsuit her family filed, rather than trying to fight it. Obviously, the money cannot bring her back to life, and will never be adequate compensation for her loved ones’ loss.It's very unfortunate that so many people in our society are eager to resort to violence before they even know why they're doing so. It's almost a reflexive response to news they don't like, and they're not interested in waiting until they know the facts before they decide that an injustice has been done and that it's time to loot, burn and even kill.
But that could also have been said for the politicized filing of unprovable homicide charges. The legal system can only do the best it can; it cannot fully compensate for tragic loss, and its criminal processes are not equipped to address catastrophes that are not crimes.
The state of Kentucky was right not to opt for mob justice. Unfortunately, the mob has a different conception of “justice,” and it is ripping the country apart.
Such people are either morally stunted or not very smart. Or both.
