Say Her Name? : A Different Understanding of the Breonna Taylor Case (media blog post #2)
Say Her Name? : A Different Understanding of the Breonna Taylor Case
Aaron Hoda
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
As we all know by now, Breonna Taylor was a African American woman who was tragically caught in the crossfire in a shootout with police and her boyfriend. If you are like me you might question why you keep seeing her name pop up in the news, social media, and other media then this post may give you some insight. Are the officers involved really to blame? For some people we may think that all we know is that she was caught in a crossfire by police with her boyfriend and had tragically died. The circumstances surrounding her death are all over the place and will be noticed on some social media platforms; her name being advertised daily with posts about arresting the officers involved and having them charged. In this blog post, I will be giving a different viewpoint to this incident, in which we can analyze further whether or not justice was really sought out during this case.
I will now be paraphrasing what I had heard in the podcast in which I used for this blog post; I made sure to list the more important aspects of this case and the details that may not be known. This incident takes place in Louisville, Kentucky where Breonna Taylor was slain in her own bed. The police entered the scene with a no knock warrant under the suspicion that Jamarcus Glover was drug dealing out of Breonna’s apartment. This at one point was a strictly Louisville story until George Floyd’s death brought this all to light. A four month investigation into her case came to the conclusion when only one of the three officers were charged for reckless endangerment in shooting into the neighboring apartment and not for the death of Breonna Taylor. The officer who was charged was also fired as well, but people everywhere question why charges were not given to the other officers involved. People do not always understand the whole situation and may only bring up small minor details in situations like this, so we must backtrack and go over some facts about her case to properly assess the situation.
The officers had a no knock warrant, allowing full access to not use any commands to alert civilians of their presence.The police raided the apartment, but both Breonna and Kenneth Walker didn’t know that police were the people knocking down their door. The self defense law of Kentucky states that if a person shoots at you first, then in turn have the right to shoot back in self defense. However both parties did not know who was shooting at who, and it would be very hard to convict officers on homicide charges. This fact is something most people leave out when posting their opinions about who is wrong in this situation. Circumstances are everything within this case especially when one of the witnesses speaking out was questioned three separate times saying he didn’t hear the police announce themselves. However on the third questioning he says he did hear police announce themselves to Mr. Walker upon raiding the apartment.
The legal case and moral case are two different things that need to be taken into account which in turns means murder charges can’t be filed against the officers involved. Morally this is wrong and people are hurt but that doesn’t mean justice was served. The concept of resistance is an interesting concept that we face in our everyday life, and in the case of Breonna Taylor, both Mr.Walker and the officers involved demonstrated resistance. Police demonstrating resistance and avoidance has proven ineffective when policing blacks (Davis, 2018). I will ask the question of what would you do in a situation like this? Would it really be so easy to deter a man from shooting his firearm? Or even announcing to a possible drug dealer that you as a police officer are here to bring him to justice? People tend to not think from other perspectives and in the police’s point of view the smart move is to raid the apartment without shooting; whereas in Mr. Walker’s case, to grab your legal firearm and resist. The point is that we are all human including police officers, and in the moment can not always process their actions as accurately as we think they should.
Some people have unconscious bias towards blacks in which behavior is solely based on the color of your skin. “If you are white you are alright, if you are brown stick around, and if you are black, get back”(Davis, 2018). This expression highlighted from the book “Policing the Black Man” showcases a little known saying to protect yourself in the community against racial bias. If we soley make decisions based on skin color, then we can plausibly say that is morally wrong. So in a case of Breonna Taylor her race/skin color did not determine how police acted or who would possibly be killed. Remember that this is another viewpoint in which I give a different side or angle in which we can all look at this case. The unconscious bias that we have may play a role in the decisions and words we say but that doesn’t mean it did force us to act the way we did. “Say her name”, the chant you may hear is in reference to her death and to make sure she isn’t forgotten. Furthermore, she isn’t forgotten but more or less not getting the moral justice some seem to think hasn’t been achieved through our legal system and in part due to her race which is just utterly false.
The podcast I had listened to was called The Criminal Injustice Podcast and discussed Breonna’s case a bit more in depth than I have in my post. I highly recommend if you want a neutral opinion telling you the story. Furthermore, this podcast helped fill in some gaps in the Breonna Taylor case that I was not aware of, as well as the podcast giving myself more insight which shows how the police officers most likely won’t face drastic charges. I hope this post encourages people to think about race and certain facts about the Breonna Taylor case differently and to not say something that doesn’t back up your claim. Legal and Moral cases are different especially in the case of Breonna Taylor, in which we clearly see that the legal system follows guidelines not emotions. “Say Her Name” can’t be quantified into the legal equation in which we can use to achieve justice, while it is a tragedy she is gone from the world she won’t be forgotten.
References
Criminal (In)justice – Bonus: Breonna Taylor’s Death Wasn’t a Tragic Accident. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2020, from https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5yZWRjaXJjbGUuY29tLzY0NWJkNzk3LTc2MTItNDI4Yy1hODZjLTdlYWMxZjg0OTA0Mg/episode/YWU3NzRhZTMtMjgzMy00NDFmLWEwZDgtODc2ZmUzOTMwY2Yx?sa=X
Davis, A. J. (2018). Policing the Black man: Arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.