MSNBC host Joy Reid said that the charges brought by the Louisville grand jury against just one of the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor homicide demonstrates that police have the ability to get away with killing people “so long as they aim at you.”
Talking to Ari Melber live after the indictments were handed down, Reid said about the charges, “This is a ‘Black Lives Don’t Matter’ judgement.”
Officer Brett Hankison was charged with three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree, a Class A felony in Kentucky that can lead to a prison term of up to five years for each count. Hankison has since been fired by the Louisville Metro Police Department.
The charges were levied against Hankison, who stood outside Taylor’s apartment on the patio and fired at least ten shots into the apartment, a number of which went through the walls of the apartment into other residences. The charges are based on the danger the three residents of the other apartment were placed under by the wild gunfire.
The unarmed Taylor was killed by police gunfire as they executed a no-knock warrant on her apartment reportedly looking for an acquaintance who had not been at her residence in months. She was shot and died in her bedroom, when officers returned fire after Taylor’s boyfriend fired on the two officers, thinking they were home invaders.
Reportedly, officers did not announce it was a police entering her apartment. Officers claimed they announced themselves, but Taylor’s boyfriend and neighbors said they heard no such announcement before the door was breached.
The two officers who entered the apartment through the door fired more than 20 rounds in response to the one fired by Taylor’s boyfriend. Six struck Taylor.
“It sounds as if, this one officer being charged, was having ‘extreme indifference’ to everyone else’s life but Breonna Taylor,” Reid noted.
Reid also asserted that the so-called “castle doctrine,” a legal assertion that people have the right to safety in their homes including the right to defend their homes as necessary, is a fallacy. With this indictment, Reid said, police have the right to burst into your home and shot you without fear of repercussion so long as they aim at you.