Was Breonna Taylor a Victim of Systemic Racism?
By Aaron Briley
On September 23, 2020, the Jefferson County Grand Jury decided that officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove would not face criminal charges for the death of Breonna Taylor.1 Shortly after, rioters and looters took to the streets to express their rage by smashing windows, burning buildings, and shooting two police officers.2
The rioters were self-righteously indignant, claiming an injustice had occurred. Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother, said, “The police and law were not made to protect us Black and brown women.”3 As a result of the grand jury’s decision, Palmer has “no faith in the legal system.”4 Benjamin Crump, Palmer’s lawyer, shares this perspective. Crump said that the grand jury’s decision is an example of systemic racism that persists in America.5 . . .
Many echo this claim. For instance, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear states, “I will never feel the weight of 400 years of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow . . . but I can listen, I can try to hear, and I can be clear: Systemic racism exists in this world, in this country and in our commonwealth.”6 Jonathan Simon, associate dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, states, “Whether you want to blame it on these individual officers in Louisville or not, this is a real story of racial injustice.”7 Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the University of Buffalo Center for Urban Studies, notes that Taylor’s “death highlights a distinct genre of racially motivated police aggression, harassment, and violence.”8
Is this a fair assessment? Are we justified in asserting or even suggesting that antiblack racism played a role in Taylor’s death or the trial that followed?
Let’s consider what actually happened on the night Breonna Taylor died. Although many believe that the officers were at the wrong address, this is not true. In fact, the officers obtained a no-knock warrant for Taylor’s residence, which they served on May 13, 2020.9 (A copy of the warrant has been released and can be found online.)10
The Louisville Police Department requested the warrant for Taylor’s residence because (1) her ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover, a known drug-trafficker, was using her home as a primary address, (2) in the months prior to the warrant, investigators surveilled Glover’s criminal activity and witnessed Taylor accompany him while buying and selling drugs, and (3) Glover was recorded saying that Taylor agreed to safeguard his drug money. Officers obtained this information from recorded phone calls that Glover made while in jail.11 (Leaked transcripts of the phone calls can be found online.)12
Although the officers obtained a no-knock warrant that gave them permission to breach Taylor’s door unannounced, they took additional precautions by knocking and—according to the officers and the sworn testimony of an eyewitness—announcing their presence.13 After not hearing a response, the officers battered down the door to find Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, facing them in the hallway. At this point, Walker shot officer Mattingly in the leg, and the officers returned fire. Taylor was shot six times and died from her wounds.14 In an affidavit taken immediately after the event, Walker confessed to initiating fire on the officers as soon as the door was breached. (A copy of his affidavit can be found online.)15 When presented with this account and the supporting evidence, the grand jury decided not to charge the officers with Taylor’s death.
So why do so many hold that Taylor’s case involves antiblack discrimination? Many seem to take the fact that a black woman was killed by white officers as sufficient grounds for this conclusion. But clearly, we don’t need to invoke race to explain why officers defended themselves as they did, and, as far as I’m aware, no direct evidence suggests that any of the officers involved acted on racist motives.
Some assert that police generally employ a double standard, behaving differently in white communities than they do in black ones—and that the officers in this case did exactly that. For example, Jack Glaser, a social psychologist at Berkeley, said, “The larger context of the Breonna Taylor killing is that police operate in communities of color with a high degree of aggression,” and “It’s entirely reasonable to say that they would have acted with greater restraint in a white community. And that’s the racial injustice of this.”16
But is it “reasonable” to suppose that these officers lacked restraint and that this deficit was due to racial bias?
Let’s investigate.
Again, although the officers were authorized to batter down the door, they knocked and announced themselves. Does this demonstrate a lack of restraint? Quite the contrary.
Perhaps Glaser means that the police responded recklessly to Walker’s deadly fire and that this wouldn’t occur in a white neighborhood. Ballistic reports reveal that after Walker shot officer Mattingly, the officers fired thirty-two rounds (Mattingly fired six, Cosgrove sixteen, and Hankison ten).17 Why so many? Police are trained to shoot until they “terminate the threat”; and, in high-stress, life-or-death situations, it’s not uncommon for an officer to mistake his colleagues’ shots for those of a suspect.18 It’s ironic that a social psychologist is among those condemning these officers while apparently ignoring the psychological reality of the situation they faced.
Is there really any reason to believe that, under the threat of deadly force, these officers would have defended themselves “with greater restraint in a white community” than they did here? Is there any reason to believe that their response was racially biased? None at all. Walker shot first, and he took a man down. These officers were legally and morally obligated to defend themselves, and no evidence suggests that their manner of doing so was racist. As Andrew McCarthy, senior fellow at the National Review Institute, sums up:
The police were properly executing a lawful warrant. There appears to have been more than adequate probable cause for the search in light of Glover’s ties to the apartment. Even if there were any doubt about that, the warrant had been duly authorized and therefore police were entitled to rely on it. And they were fired upon before reasonably responding with lethal force.19
The fact that the officers followed the law does not mean that no legitimate concerns surround the case. We should decriminalize drugs, and we should reconsider the requirements for obtaining no-knock warrants. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about individuals—or the entire criminal justice system—without evidence.
Breonna Taylor’s death is a tragedy, and it’s understandable that people are upset. However, emotions are not a means of cognition, and it’s all the more important to remember this in a cultural climate wherein groups are actively fanning the flames of racial tension. Anyone who steps back and coolly examines the evidence will see—as the jurors did—that racism, systemic or otherwise, has nothing to do with the Breonna Taylor case.