It’s been more than 150 days since Breonna Taylor was brutally murdered in her own home by police officers and yet still, nobody has been charged.
In the most recent development (if you can even call it that), Breonna’s family met with Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron so he could “personally express his condolences.”
It was the first time he had met with the family since Breonna’s death.
After the meeting, Breonna’s mother Tamika Palmer spoke at a press conference where she discussed the progress on her daughter’s case (or lack thereof).
She said,
“[AG Daniel Cameron] wants to have the right answer at the end of this. He doesn’t want to rush through it. So for me, I’m trying to accept that and be patient with that. Because I definitely want him to come out with the right answer.”
AG Cameron took over the case in May and yet no progress has been made since then.
According to one of the family’s attorneys Benjamin Crump, they still haven’t even finished testing the ballistics, something that should have been done months ago. He said,
“It really speaks to why we should not have the police policing themselves. Because we lost two months while we were letting them try to figure out how to justify the unjustifiable. And so now we’re waiting on ballistics tests over 150 days later?”
On top of that, they are apparently still conducting “re-interviews” of the witnesses.
A case as straight-forward as this shouldn’t take five months to investigate. We already have the eye-witness, Breonna’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who saw the murder first-hand. We have the 9-1-1 phone call that Kenneth made in which he described men breaking into his apartment, who he clearly didn’t know were police. We know the officers had the wrong address and that they already had their main suspect in custody.
And yet, nobody has even been charged with murder. Two officers involved in the shooting, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and detective Myles Cosgrove, have been placed on administrative leave. The third officer, detective Brett Hankison, was fired in June for his use of “deadly force” during the shooting.
It’s clear that getting justice for Breonna Taylor is not a priority for the office of the AG.
One of the problems is that news of Breonna’s murder didn’t catch the public’s attention until months later. And, unlike in the murder of George Floyd, there was no viral video documenting the heinous crime.
Obviously, it should not take a video to get justice. But sadly it seems like the only thing that can move the needle when it comes to investigating police brutality (not that it ever leads to convictions, of course).
The office of the AG is clearly just not that motivated to resolve the case. Perhaps they think that if they wait long enough, the public will move on and they will get away with murder — literally.
And they might be right. Unfortunately, between everything going on in the world, including a deadly pandemic and a raving lunatic as president who is attempting to sabotage the upcoming campaign, and the small attention spans of the public, it’s quite possible that many will forget about Breonna. Even media outlets have stopped covering the protests with the same fervor they once did. And all though Breonna’s name still circulates on social media, she’s largely been reduced to memes.
Still, Breonna’s family remains hopeful. Their lawyer Benjamin Crump said,
“I absolutely expect there to be charges based on the evidence.”
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