trainspotter Loc: Oregon

My home was destroyed over a few jars of weed...It took days to put it back together...(NO guns were found)...the "officer" said: "this dude don't even have a sharp stick.....wonder how he protects himself?)"

idaholover Loc: Nampa ID

This pretty much sums up my thoughts at this time.

https://www.facebook.com/realCharlieKirk/videos/368860857817004/UzpfSTEwMDA1MTk5NTc0OTcyNzoxNjc3NDk4MjQ5NjgyMDg/

idaholover Loc: Nampa ID

But they DID knock, so not lazy. Once again, here's your ass back

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Opinion by
Radley Balko
Columnist
September 24, 2020 at 4:50 p.m. EDT
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Wednesday’s announcement from Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron about criminal charges in the Breonna Taylor case set off a frenzy of misinformation on social media. Based on what we do know — which I’ve culled from my own reporting, reporting from the New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal, as well as from conversations with the lawyers for Taylor’s family — the decision to charge Detective Brett Hankison with wanton endangerment was probably correct, as was the decision not to charge the other officers involved in the shooting. If ballistics had conclusively shown that one of the bullets from Hankison’s gun k**led Taylor, he could be charged with reckless homicide, but according to Cameron, the bullets that struck Taylor could not be matched to Hankison’s gun. There’s the problem that the police who conducted the raid were relying on a warrant procured by another officer, which was then signed by a judge. There were many flaws and abrogations in that process, but it would be unfair and not legal to hold them accountable for any of that.
But “not illegal” should not mean “immune from criticism.” Part of the problem was Cameron himself, who was selective in what information he released to the point of misleading the public about key facts in the case. (This raises real questions about whether the grand jury was also misled. That’s why an attorney for Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who fired at the police during the raid, is demanding that Cameron release the evidence that was presented to the grand jury.)
Furthermore, Taylor’s death was not, as Cameron suggested, simply a tragedy for which no one is to blame. The police work in this case was sloppy, and the warrant service was reckless. Taylor is dead because of a cascade of errors, bad judgment and dereliction of duty. And it’s important that the record on this be clear. So here are some correctives for the misinformation I’ve seen online:
Kentucky AG announces findings in Breonna Taylor case

Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron (R) spoke about the grand jury's investigation into the death of Breonna Taylor. (Reuters)
“This was not a no-knock warrant.”


It absolutely was. It says so right on the warrant. Moreover, the portion of the warrant authorizing a no-knock entry cited only cut-and-pasted information from the four other warrants that were part of the same investigation. This is a violation of a requirement set by the Supreme Court that no-knock warrants should be granted when police can present evidence that a particular suspect is a risk to shoot at police or destroy evidence if they knock and announce. They didn’t do that.
The police claim they were told after the fact to disregard the no-knock portion and instead knock and announce themselves, because, by that point, someone had determined that Taylor was a “soft target” — not a threat, and not a major player in the drug investigation. But there are problems with this account. If Taylor was a “soft target,” why not surround the house, get on a megaphone, and ask her to come out with her hands up? Why still take down her door with a battering ram? Why still serve the warrant in the middle of the night?
“The police knocked and announced themselves, and a witness heard them.”


In what was probably the most frustrating part of Cameron’s press event, he cited a single witness who claimed to have heard the officers identify themselves as police. I spoke with Taylor’s lawyers in June, who at that time had interviewed 11 of her neighbors. Many lived in the same apartment building as Taylor. According to the lawyers, no neighbor heard an announcement. The New York Times interviewed 12 neighbors. They found one — just one — who heard an announcement. And he only heard one announcement. He also told the paper that with all the commotion, it’s entirely possible that Walker and Taylor didn’t hear that announcement. Cameron neglected to mention any of this.
Moreover, in a CNN interview Wednesday night, Walker’s attorney, Steven Romines, said the witness to whom Cameron was referring initially said he did not hear the police announce themselves. And he repeated that assertion in a second interview. It was only after his third interview that he finally said he heard an announcement. That’s critical context that Cameron neglected to mention.
The Post’s View: Criminal charges and police reforms in Louisville are welcome. But they can’t bring Breonna Taylor back.
“Even Kenneth Walker has admitted that the police pounded on the door for 30 to 45 seconds. Therefore, by definition, this was not a ’no-knock’ raid.”

With a few exceptions, when conducting a raid, government agents must knock and announce their presence and purpose, and give anyone inside the opportunity to let the officers in peacefully — thus avoiding violence to their person and destruction of their property. If the police simply pounded on the door for 45 seconds and never appropriately announced themselves, that’s even worse than not knocking at all. It likely made Walker even more fearful that the people outside the door were there to do harm to him and Taylor.
“If the police say they announced themselves, and one neighbor heard it, then they probably did. So what if the other neighbors didn’t hear it? They were probably asleep.”
The entire purpose of the knock-and-announce requirement is to provide ample notice to the people inside the home the police are trying to enter. If the police didn’t yell loudly and clearly who they were — loud enough for the people inside to hear — the knock-and-announce portion is rendered meaningless, and the entire action becomes no different than a no-knock raid. As the Times reported, the officers on this raid were trained by a man who, oddly enough, is now president of the Louisville city council. “During his 19-year career as a police officer, he had instructed recruits at the local training academy about ‘dynamic entry.‘ Especially when executing a warrant at night,” he told the paper, “he told them to yell ‘police’ at the top of their lungs, specifically so that occupants would not mistake them for an intruder.” That clearly did not happen here.

“Breonna Taylor was not asleep in her bed when she was shot.”
This is true. And it’s also true that many media reports and activists stated she was. I’m not sure what difference this makes. She and Walker were in their bed when police began pounding on the door. They were awakened at 12:40 a.m. There’s every reason to believe Walker when he says they were frightened.
“The man who shot at the police, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, was also a drug dealer.”
Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was dealing drugs. That man, Jamarcus Glover, was the main focus of the police investigation. Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend at the time of her death, was not named in any investigation.
A few people have pointed to a leaked police memo that includes quotes from Glover taken from recorded phone conversations at the jail as proof that the two knew one another. The Louisville police themselves have said the leaked memo was an early, unverified draft written mid-investigation, that these quotes were taken out of context, and that the way they’re being used is deeply misleading. (For example, Glover said Walker was also in jail. He was — because police had arrested him after the raid.)

“Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend implicated her in his drug dealing.”
The Times reported that according to friends, family and Taylor’s social media posts, she was on and off again with both Glover — who friends, family and Taylor herself thought was bad for her — and Walker, who they say treated her well and was, by all accounts, a good and decent man. Glover was in and out of jail, and Taylor paid his bail more than once. She seemed to genuinely care for him, even as she was trying to extricate herself from his life. (She had blocked him on her cellphone.)
There were a few other incidents in the warrant that some have said implicated Taylor. In December 2016 she rented a car, then loaned it to Glover. He then loaned it to a man involved in his drug dealing — and that man was later found dead in the car. But police who investigated were satisfied that Taylor had no knowledge of the murder, or of how Glover had used the car when she loaned it to him. The other incident occurred two months before the raid, when Glover retrieved a package he had ordered delivered to Taylor’s home. The police claimed a postal inspector told them this package was “suspicious.” The postal inspector later said he had no record of that. According to attorneys for Taylor’s family, the package contained clothes and shoes.

Some have again pointed to that leaked memo, in which Glover seemed to suggest storing money at Taylor’s apartment. But the police found no cash in the apartment. Glover has also since publicly said that Taylor had no involvement in his drug dealing. And he may have had some incentive to say otherwise: In July, attorneys for Taylor’s family say prosecutors presented Glover with a plea bargain that listed Taylor as a co-defendant, suggesting that he’d get reduced charges if he implicated her. (Prosecutors say the plea deal was just a draft, though Taylor’s family’s attorneys say that claim is dubious.)
“The judge who signed the warrant is not to blame.”
The warrant in this case was signed by Louisville Circuit Judge Mary Shaw. In an op-ed in the Courier-Journal, one of Shaw’s fellow judges defended accusations that she had “rubber-stamped” the warrant. Judge Charles L. Cunningham wrote that “affidavits are excruciatingly detailed,” said Shaw scrupulously reviews search warrant affidavits, and said the accusation from an attorney for Taylor’s family that Shaw took only 12 minutes to review the five warrants in the investigation was riddled with “falsehoods and misstatements.”

Here’s what we can say: The portion of the warrant affidavit that requested a no-knock raid was the exact same language used in the other four warrants. It stated that drug dealers are dangerous and might dispose of evidence if police knock and announce. It contained no particularized information as to why Taylor herself was dangerous or presented such a threat. And that, according to the Supreme Court, is not sufficient to grant a no-knock warrant. Yet Shaw granted it anyway. Perhaps she provided more scrutiny to the other parts of the affidavit. But she did not ask for more evidence in the no-knock portion. And she should have.
The only possible defense of Shaw here is that, as regular readers of this page know, judges seem to grant no-knocks when they aren’t merited and in defiance of Supreme Court precedent with regularity. And there’s no harm done if the no-knock position of the warrant is illegal, because the same Supreme Court has said the Exclusionary Rule doesn’t apply. And that is precisely the problem.
“If Kenneth Walker hadn’t shot at the cops, Breonna Taylor would still be alive.”

Walker admits he fired first. But he says he fired only after he and Taylor repeatedly asked who was pounding at the door, got no answer, and after a battering ram busted open the door. If Walker reasonably believed that the men breaking into the apartment were not police, he had every right to defend himself and Taylor. At that point, the police also had the right to return fire. The latter would be true even if the courts later determined that the police had failed to properly identify themselves (which would make this a no-knock raid) and the no-knock portion of the warrant was later determined to be illegal (which it was). That’s how the law works.
But there is every reason to believe Walker did not know the men outside the door were police. Walker is not a criminal. There were no drugs in the house. You don’t need a license to have a gun in a private home in Kentucky, but Walker had gone the extra step to obtain a concealed carry license. (Kentucky changed its law in 2019, and no longer requires a license for concealed carry either.) That isn’t something hardened criminals hellbent on k*****g cops tend to do. Neither is calling 911, which Walker also did after the shooting. Moreover, Walker knew about Taylor’s past involvement with the drug dealer Glover — and that Glover wasn’t happy about Taylor seeing Walker. He has said he feared that it was Glover or his associates outside the door. That too seems entirely reasonable.
Cameron’s statement gives the implication that Walker should have known that the men were police. But if police and prosecutors truly believed Walker knew, or should have known, that the raiding men were police, they would have prosecuted Walker for knowingly trying to k**l them. Police and prosecutors don’t take that sort of thing lightly. They did arrest him for firing at the officers. But they later dropped those charges and released him. That speaks volumes.
The really sad part about this is that Cameron’s misleading statement about the witness who heard police announce — along with the fact the Walker fired first — has led some to put the blame for Taylor’s death on Walker. What Walker did that night is what just about anyone would have done if they thought they or their loved ones were under attack. Walker and Taylor were in love. They had been discussing marriage. He was defending a woman he wanted to marry, and with whom he wanted to raise a family. To put her death on him only adds to his pain and grief. It’s just incredibly cruel.
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“This is just an all-around tragedy. We shouldn’t focus on who to blame, whether its police, prosecutors, Walker or Taylor.”
The most serious questions here concern the investigation itself, and why these officers were asked to serve a warrant on Taylor’s home in the first place. There’s the lie about the postal inspector. There is the fact that despite the surveillance on Taylor’s home, the police didn’t know there was another person inside. There are the police bullets that were inadvertently fired into surrounding apartments. There’s the cut-and-paste language used to secure the no-knock portion of the warrant. There’s also the fact that the officer who procured the warrant was not part of the raid team. There’s the fact that five officers involved in the Taylor raid were involved in another violent, botched raid on an innocent family in 2018.
And there’s the 2015 study by criminologist Bryan Patrick Schaefer, who was allowed to embed himself with the Louisville police department. As Schaffer wrote, “Of the 73 search warrant entries observed, every entry involved using a ram to break the door down." Continued in a subsequent post.

DennyT Loc: Central Missouri woods

Then broke the door down !!!

You have no idea how long they edited , how loud, ,

One neighbor said they heard tgd police another 11 said they didn’t .

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Continuation of Balko opinion:

Further, the detectives announce their presence and purpose in conjunction with the first hit on the door. A detective explained, ‘As long as we announce our presence, we are good. We don’t want to give them any time to destroy evidence or grab a weapon, so we go fast and get through the door quick.‘”
Schaefer added that in the raids he observed, the difference between how police served a no-knock warrant and a knock-and-announce warrant was “minimal in practice.”
Schaeffer also found that for warrant service, Louisville police fill out a “risk matrix” to determine whether to bring in a SWAT team. A case has to meet a minimum score before determining whether SWAT will be used. The other raids done in conjunction with the Glover investigation did use SWAT, which also means police ensure there are ambulances and medical personnel nearby. I happen to think SWAT teams are overutilized. But if you are going to break into someone’s house, a well-trained, full-time SWAT team is far preferable to a bunch of cops in street clothes kicking down a door.
The irony here is that Taylor was not deemed threatening enough to merit a SWAT team. Instead, she was subjected to all of the most dangerous aspects of a SWAT raid, undertaken by officers in street clothes. There were no medics nearby. In fact, an ambulance on standby was told to leave the scene an hour before the raid. After she was shot, Taylor lie in her house for 20 minutes before receiving any medical attention.
And there are more questions:
— Why serve a warrant in the middle of the night on a witness tangential to an investigation?
— Why did the police alter the times on their reports?
— The most recent activity involving Taylor on the search warrants was in January. Why wait until March to serve the warrant on her apartment?
— Why didn’t police do any further investigation to better establish how involved in the drug conspiracy Taylor really was?
To simply blow this off as a tragedy for which no one is to blame is an insult to the life and legacy of Taylor, but also to the dozens of innocent people who have been gunned down in their own homes before her. And the effort by Cameron and others to make all of this go away by feeding the public half-t***hs that blame the victims in this story — Taylor and Walker — for Taylor’s death is inexcusable.
We could prevent the next Breonna Taylor. We could ban forced entry raids to serve drug warrants. We could hold judges accountable for signing warrants that don’t pass constitutional muster. We could demand that police officers wear body cameras during these raids to hold them accountable, and that they be adequately punished when they fail to activate them. We could do a lot to make sure there are no more Breonna Taylors. The question is whether we want to.

pendennis

You miss the point, intentionally.

Once announced, the police don't have to wait any specified amount of time before they attempt to breach the door. They knocked, they announced who they were, waited an unspecified time for an answer, then breached the door. That the subject fired on the police changes the protocol. They shoot back in the direction of where the fire originated.

It doesn't matter what "another 11" heard or didn't hear. Unless they were in the immediate vicinity, they likely didn't hear anything, maybe not the gun fire. Who knows? I wasn't there; you weren't there, so any comment you or I make is only speculation based on what we've read or heard.

pendennis

Balko asks a lot of questions in the cold light of day; that couldn't be answered in the heat of the night.

- Warrants are served in the wee hours, because folks' defenses are usually down, because they're asleep, and fresh from sleep, they may be unable to respond aggressively.
- It's not unusual to have conflicting times made on different reports. That's why after-action reports are done and why times, places, etc., are reconciled. That's no sign of conspiracy.
- Acquisition of search warrants in longer term investigations usually take a longer than a suspect who just committed a bank robbery, and the trail is hot. This involved a task force, and there's limited manpower, so the most important, most critical aspects are handled first.

Balko is incapable of rendering rational judgement. Judgement must be given when the bodies are cold, and tempers have cooled. That's why trials are never conducted quickly.

Taylor was not innocent by any stretch. She associated with criminals, and committed criminal acts herself. She was at the scene of a violent confrontation. She was a casualty of the conflict.

I'll repeat the military maxim - In combat, anything you do can get you shot -- including doing nothing.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Fine. I understand your point.
I offered the OPINION piece as OPINION.

pendennis

My comment was not to rebut you in what you cited. I was only commenting on the piece itself. I appreciate your efforts.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Shots were fired at the police hitting one of the police officers before the police fired their guns, witness testimony confirms that the police knocked and identified themselves.... Yes, Breonna Taylor was innocent, her boyfriend shot in self-defense, so did the cops... A tragic event but who do you want to charge with what and can you defend your position?

pendennis

To address your post, Taylor was far from an "innocent victim" in this incident. She knowingly associated with a dealer of illegal drugs, and likely was involved in the distribution of those drugs. Since she's deceased, she can no longer tell her "side of the story".

As with any tragedy, the best final results are those adjudicated in the cold light of day.

There may have well been extenuating circumstances, but since the police were fired on by the boy friend, the primary concern becomes self-protection of the police officers, and to overcome the resistance in the apartment by the police. All police departments will exert the necessary force to bring a situation into control, or arrest a potential felon. If the police, wherever they are, decide to arrest you, no amount of talking will keep them from their duty, and if you resist, they will overcome you with more force that you could imagine.

There were errors made:

First - There were defects in the warrant, of which the serving detectives were unaware.

Second - The object of the warrant decided to resist; whether he assumed he was in personal danger, is only an ameliorating factor.

Third - The late Taylor has become a cause celebre for B*M and other l*****t groups; that, in and of itself is suspect in its sincerity.

Fourth, the political establishment in Louisville sought to buy the peace by paying a $12 million dollar settlement to Taylor's relatives. It was also thought that a quick settlement would ensure indictments of police officers, thus showing how PC the mayor and his cronies really are. They showed a rush to judgement. Pure and simple.

Instead of seeking the t***h, the r****rs and other agents provocateur have tried to put the grand jury, and law enforcement on trial. This is disingenuous at best, s*******s at worst, and a proven tactic of them.

Finally, Taylor was not ignored. She was k**led by the detectives returning hostile fire. Kentucky law, as well as in many other states allows for people to defend themselves from attack, whether a police officer or "civilian". There's no distinction when it comes to self-defense. The grand jury did not consider her, because the detectives were acting in self-defense; and the wanton endangerment indictment of the third detective was for his actions in firing blindly; his reckless act, however, did not wound or k**l anyone.

Too many folks are not examining this in the legal terms, which is what this involves.

btbg

The indictment is absolutely appropriate. The officer charged fired through a wall, which obviously endangered others.

No other officers should have been disciplined or charged in any way. They were legally serving a warrant. Granted, the warrant itself may have been bad, but the officers serving the warrant had no knowledge of that. That would be on the DA or judge who signed off on the warrant and the officer who supplied the false information about Taylor.

The officers according to an eye witness knocked and identified themselves. Taylor's boyfriend either ignored the police identification or did not hear it. Either way he fired and hit one of the officers, who correctly returned fire. After all they thought they were serving a warrant related to a drug charge and were told that there was a chance that there could be an armed individual in the residence.

So, they did exactly what they were supposed to do. It was a terrible tragedy for Taylor who at least at that time did nothing wrong. (She had previously dated a drug dealer who the police had arrested earlier that day, which is what the warrant was about), but there were no drugs on the premises. So, Taylor died through no fault of her own. Her boyfriend was initially charged with shooting the police officer and then the charges were correctly dropped since there was reasonable doubt as to him knowing it was police or legitimately believing it was intruders, so the justice system worked correctly there.

Then, the officers who were not charged did exactly what police are supposed to do when they are fired at, so there should have been no charges there either.

Any charges against anyone would have to be against the officer who originally sought the warrant and the individual who granted it. Other than that the system worked correctly.

What needs to be corrected is our warrant system, not what the police did.

FrumCA

This doesn't require a lot of debate or rationalizing of the facts. This is a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Notwithstanding wh**ever her involvement was in his illegal drug activities, Taylor was dating a known criminal and she put herself in harms way by associating with him. The Grand Jury was correct in it's findings.

Bazbo Loc: Lisboa, Portugal

There are conflicting eyewitness accounts as to whether the police announced themselves before or upon entry.

The body cam evidence needs to be released to the public. No knock warrants are at odds with "stand your ground". And as a matter of public policy this needs to be resolved.


Also, note that no drugs were found and the warrant itself seems, at least as I read it, based on a pretty thin predicate.