I'm just surprised that they didn't posthumously indict Breonna Taylor for her own murder given that she was Black and asleep when the cops kicked her down her door and opened fire.

@2,

They could have dressed as police and knocked on the door and identified themselves. They could have communicated with dispatch before breaking down the door to find out the suspect they were there to arrest had already been arrested.

But no. They were afraid they wouldn't get their big moment in the spotlight of catching a drug dealer.

Killed an innocent woman all in the name of a war on drugs that was lost decades ago.

@2 - what possible reason was there for a middle of the night no-knock entrance here? Not like someone was in any imminent danger whatsoever (until the cops got there).

And as to your "play with fire, get burned" canard, are you saying that we ought to have the death penalty for holding illicit money? If so, I'll meet you at the White House. Bring your rope. I won't lift a finger to stop you.

The dark prophesies of civil war are a nice touch to an otherwise tedious, boilerplate post. Innovative.

Police shouldn't be kicking in doors, guns drawn, in the dead of night as a matter of routine. Brutality and violence are the first recourse for police in this country and that is a problem that needs solving.

So, basically one cop was charged, not because an innocent person was murdered in cold blood, but because some other innocent people MIGHT have been murdered in cold blood. Let that sink in for a moment.

@14 - the real act that led to this (and what should not have been done) was a night-time military style raid in search of evidence or maybe a suspect in a non-violent crime. Maybe we should not let the cops run wild and use this kind of tactic. If they had done this in daylight, very likely none of the confusion and violence would have ensued.

@20 - that's even worse than what I have read before. Cops HAVE to knock this crap off.

As much as I hate to say it, and it's a first, but I agree with @6.
The protesters and many here wanted the Grand Jury to make an emotional decision irrespective of what the actual law states. They didn't; they made a decision based solely on the law.

I have no trouble believing that the officers announced their presence, as that would be SOP and done virtually everywhere. In Dallas, every person on the entry team would be yelling police from the instant the ram hits the door on no-knock warrants, and all would be wearing police windbreakers if not in uniform.

No-Knocks are done to preserve evidence and prevent occupants from having time to prepare a defense. Of course, the criticism is that they can also lead occupants to believe non-police intruders are breaking into their residence. That's why we would shout "Police! from the second the ram impacts the door. Most other agencies are the same.

As to the warrant, it was a search warrant, so it doesn't matter if their main drug dealer was in custody already; the warrant is to search the premises...primarily for money from drug sales is my understanding. The warrant was legal, and it was for Ms. Taylor's residence.

It's not surprising or unreasonable that the police would return fire when fired upon...if they have an identified target. The fact that Ms. Taylor was caught in the crossfire is indeed a terrible tragedy, but the two not-indicted officers did not do anything illegal.

To my mind, the culprit here is primarily the drug war writ large rather than these individual officers running this particular warrant.

@19 - Late at night or early morning is preferred under the theory that occupants of locations where the warrants are served will be too groggy to offer effective resistance or to quickly dispose of evidence. The fact that it didn't work out that way in this particular case doesn't mean that the theory isn't generally sound.

@25 - I beg to differ. Some paragraphs I skimmed but the overall tale of police incompetence is shocking.

@27 - Was the ex-boyfriend a bad apple? Absolutely. Was it unfortunate that she'd gotten mixed up with him? You bet. But none of that should have gotten her killed. Again, they were simply serving a search warrant, and as the NY Times article noted, they were expecting her to be alone and unarmed. Going in the way they did was massive overkill.

Also, consider the effect of police going in unidentified in a "stand-your-ground" state where lots of people are armed for self-defense. It basically sets this situation up - the resident would likely not know that it was cops instead of a burglar, and the law allows him to use deadly force. And we all know what happens anytime someone shoots at a cop for any reason. I still maintain that the problem here is the tactics chosen by police.

@26 - the odds of a homeowner mistaking the police for an intruder and lawfully opening fire would seem to be greatly increased if he/she is "groggy" as you put it. Cops are serving a warrant, no storming Iwo Jima.

@28 - Don't forget that there is a sense of self-preservation involved. Cops do not want occupants opening fire on them, and 50 years of drug war has taught them that hitting places after bedtime reduces that chance over hitting them at tea time.

Think of when you've been jarred awake. Confused for a second or two? A couple more? That's all entry teams need to get in and get the drop on the occupants. Like I said, it doesn't always work out, but no tactic would. If anything, I think they should have run this warrant much later, like 3-4 in the morning.

@4: "But no. They were afraid they wouldn't get their big moment in the spotlight of catching a drug dealer."

This was never about finding drugs or a drug dealer since they knew in advance neither would be there; this was a civil asset forfeiture raid, or what we call armed robbery with intent to kill when anyone but a cop does it.

The cops did not perform a no-uniform, no knock raid in the dead of night to stop a crime, or arrest a criminal. They did it because they had a hot tip her ex had left $15,000 in cash there and the cops wanted to buy a new pool table and slurpy machine for their precinct. This is what passes for "protecting and serving" with law enforcement in the US and King County/Seattle has no question some of the most asset forfeiture focused cops in the country bar none.

The least surprising part of all this is the Grand Jury giving police criminals a free pass based on everything they have learned about policing from Hollywood movies.

What would be more surprising is if the police did not get awards and promotions for executing this young lady. That's simply cop SOP.

@5: "what possible reason was there for a middle of the night no-knock entrance here? Not like someone was in any imminent danger whatsoever (until the cops got there)."

Simple, the police were afraid that if they announced themselves in advance the residents might hide their cash.

Remember, with civil asset forfeiture, police do not need to prove any money in the house was illicit. They simply steal anything they want and claim they had good reason to believe it was illicit based on the hot tip they received. That would stand up in court. Remember, when cops perform an asset forfeiture raid, which is part of every raid they make, they don't try to separate legal from illicit money. They steal it all and tell you if you want it back you better hire an expensive attorney. They will be represented at the cost of the tax payer of course.

Have you every read a police report after a raid like this? I have, at least 50% of it is an inventory of what they stole after going through everyone's pockets.

That is why the total take from asset forfeiture passed the total loss from all theft and robbery in 2014 and has only increased year over year since.

Only in Hollywood is policing about stopping crime, or arresting criminals. In real life it's about stealing cash and suppressing marginalized communities through the unequal application of quality of life crimes designed to crush those least able to defend themselves.

@32 - Well, in this case the cash would have been used as additional evidence in their case against the criminal enterprise they were working, but yeah, they would want to keep it once the investigation and resulting trials/pleas were concluded.

Also, that stat about forfeitures exceeding thefts and robberies is incorrect. Forfeitures exceeded Burglary losses only in 2014. Theft losses are truly massive; there were about 18-billion in losses from just shoplift alone in 2018, a typical year. That doesn't include other thefts like employee theft, theft by checks, theft of service and auto theft (6-billion in 2018) among others.

Burglaries are much less common and only account for a mere 4.5-billion or so.

I do agree that civil forfeiture laws and practices in this country do amount to straight-up thievery by the state a clear majority of the time, and those laws need to be massively overhauled.

@10 Obviously, the issue here is that the law as written has produced an unjust outcome. One that is all too familiar - where police blunder around shooting people with impunity. Its repulsive.

And here you are to tell us she brought it on herself. Maybe you can remind us just how much filthy drug money the cops found in her apartment.

Whatever, it all came down to a handy excuse for thugs and anarchists to hijack the situation into full force rioting last night on Capitol Hill yet again, throwing fireworks at cops, smashing storefronts, tagging graffiti, and setting fires.

These people don't care about justice for Breanna Taylor, they just want to have FUN!

*Breonna

@21:

Breonna Taylor didn't fire a weapon.

@25 you know you aren't the only one that read the NYT piece before you posted it. You proclaim with zeal what you consider due process for the cops yet state with certainty implicating Taylor in the exes deeds without due process.

The trouble with these comment sections is that cops are trained to spread lies faster here than anyone can fact check and correct them. Here's a partial reply for the range from Breonna got was she deserved" to "the police did nothing illegal or wrong here" garbage in the comments above:

@2: "Look, nobody is saying she deserved to die, but the cops were executing a warrant on her residence because she was letting her scumbag ex stash drug money there. Play with fire, get burned. "

This is a gross misstatement of the facts. There is no evidence beyond police justification after murdering Breonna that her boyfriend "stashed money" there. They had one unconfirmed "hot tip" that Jamarcus had stashed $15,000 there, which proved to not be true. Setting aside how the war on drugs and the asset forfeiture that comes with it have warped police credibility beyond repair, there is no evidence her boyfriend ever "stashed" drug money, or anything else at her place.

As for the "play with fire" justification, this is the typical cop victim blaming narrative that so disgusts the public. When a women marries a police officer, she has a greater than 200% increased chance over the national average she will become a domestic abuse victim. Cops will tell you she knew this up front when she married a cop so she's was "playing with fire" and deserves what she gets. Don't you buy it. The disgusting justification for police criminality should not be tolerated.

@6: "It was because the evidence shows he did not hear that it was the police (even though an upstairs neighbor did)."

Wrong in a deceptive manner clearly intended to mislead the reader.

From the New York Times article linked above (that was written back in August and had some things wrong that have since been corrected) they had this part right:

"The officers have said that they did; Mr. Walker says he did not hear anything. In interviews with nearly a dozen neighbors, only one person said he heard the officers shout “Police!” a single time."

That sounds entirely different than your highly selective retelling, doesn’t it?

Walker was originally charged with a crime and the police were not, which changed due to heavy public scrutiny, not because of the "stand your ground" law, in Kentucky. We have seen repeatedly in this country that stand your ground laws rarely protect citizens during violent unannounced no knock police raids. The police have created a carve out in the law (you will see this over and over) where they can enter your house unannounced, often out of uniform with guns blazing at 3:00 AM and flash bangs flying and and if during this chaotic melee you accidentally and kill a cop thinking it’s a home invasion, you will almost certainly face murder 1 charges, and depending on the state the death penalty as occurred recently with this guy in Texas. Thank god the jury stopped this madness, which is highly unusual:

Texas Man Found Not Guilty for Shooting Three Cops During No Knock Raid
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-government/texas-man-found-not-guilty-for-shooting-three-cops-during-noknock-raid-ehraX84ZEUi9Q0___1p4XA

There is no fair application of the law. The police have legally enshrined a double standard in the law over the past several decades that ensures there behavior is defined as “legal” no matter how egregious and immoral the act, to include having sex with an underage girl while she is in custody,
which incredibly was considered legal in New York until this story shamed the legislature into changing it.
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/30/nypd-anna-chambers-rape-probation/
"In Secretive Court Hearing, NYPD Cops Who Raped Brooklyn Teen in Custody Get No Jail Time"

Yes, we actually need to pass special laws to make police raping children in custody not OK that for everyone else is already a high crime. Remember this the next time some poster here tells you "but the police did not break the law!"

"The two cops, who were lawfully serving a warrant, that fired back at Walker have the right of self-defense, since Taylor fired first."

This no knock warrant should never have been requested by the cops for what was clearly an asset forfeiture money grab and the failed judge who issued it, likely without bothering to read it before signing, should be recalled. the Police create the need for their "self defense" by incompetently escalating serving a simple warrant on what in their own documents they identified as a “soft target.” No one is arguing that the police have a series of law that protect their right to murder citizens in cold blood and declare it both legal and legally justified, but don’t pretend that it’s either moral or just. Those to standards are almost never applied when judging police misconduct. All they ask is if they followed procedure, which in the case of Breonna Taylor they did not.

13: ‘The process for changing law and correcting it, is a matter for the legislators we elect. “

Wrong again. Very little of police conduct is governed by the legislature, or anything other than police and their own unions. The legislature only passes laws that apply to the little people and in the extremely rare event they pass a law that apples to the police they never include criminal sanctions if and when the break those laws.

The police have legalize crime, corruption and a compete lack of accountability through their contracts and they don’t answer to prosecutors, judges, or politicians and they definitely don’t answer to the people.

“Prosecutors, judges, and juries, can only compare the actions of the parties against the law that voter's elected representative's provide to them.”

And again, wrong. We have an adversarial form of justice where judges are presumed to act as a fair arbitrator. Time and time again we see not just the defense, but prosecutors and judges acting as additional defense attorneys when it comes to the law. Prosecutors have absolute control over the evidence and just as they hide evidence that would exonerate innocent citizens, the don’t present juries in police trials (or grand juries in this case) that would lead to a conviction/indictment. On top of this, the Judge has the power to define how a jury interprets a law and can use their position to essentially deliver a directed verdict where they so define the legal interpretation of the grand jury that it leaves only one outcome, which is always innocent for cops and guilty for anyone else who is not a billionaire or a member of the protected criminal punishment system.

@14 “No law would make anyone OK with what happened to Ms. Taylor. It's a tragedy. Not all tragedies are illegal.”

That’s what I love about bad cop legal takes. Their crimes are not only redefined as tragedies as if it was a passing rain storm that killed Breonna. But they ensure what would be a crime for anyone else is defined as legal for them and declare “so unfortunate, but not against the law! We have a legal right to rape underage girls in custody!” (See New York police story above)

23: “I have no trouble believing that the officers announced their presence, as that would be SOP and done virtually everywhere.”

“I have no trouble believing that the officers” is probably where you should have stopped since that is the source of most of your misery. Do you know the police were caught altering the arrest times after the fact to make it appear they arrested Jamarcus at the same time they arrested Breonna, when in fact he was been arrested before they arrested Breonna. Why do you think they did that Morty? I know you believe from your “Law and Order” DVD collection legal training that all cops are vallorious truth tellers, so why do you think the police lied here, which I suspect you believe is the first time police have ever lied literally in the history of policing.

The vast majority of independent witnesses (12 vs. 1) claimed they did not hear them announce themselves, but that’s irrelevant since knock and announce warrants are no better than no knock warrants. If you are asleep at 3 am and the police intentionally plan their violent raid at a time they know you will be asleep and disoriented, who cared if they simply knock down the door, or announce they are the police while knocking down the door. The odds of those inside process all this correctly is very unlikely, which is the entire point from the police perspective. If cop want to play military man they should join the military and learn about proper rules of engagement. This police as criminal gang home invasion stuff needs to be severely limited except in the most extreme cases. Police have proven they can’t handle that responsibility and judges have proven they are no good at police and warrant oversight.

“No-Knocks are done to preserve evidence and prevent occupants from having time to prepare a defense.”

As is usually the case, the “evidence” they wanted to preserve was cash they wanted to steal through asset forfeiture and it is not up to the police to prevent people from preparing a defense. Particularly when they have stuff in written in their police contracts like “a mandatory 48 hours before they need to answer questions” designed to ensure they have time to invent their defense before they are interviewed for a crime. I know the entire system would crumble if he did this, but what if we treated everyone with the same extra constitutional protections we routinely offer to criminals within the police?

“It's not surprising or unreasonable that the police would return fire when fired upon...if they have an identified target.”

No, but it is surprising (actually it’s not, but it should be) that the police escalate a normal situation into a violent one when that is not called for. Forget about police learning to de-escalate a situation. How about we start by training them not to needlessly escalate situations?

“To my mind, the culprit here is primarily the drug war writ large rather than these individual officers running this particular warrant.”

That may be the only thing you ever post I can agree with Morty. Even a broken clock I guess…..

@24: “If you are looking for someone to blame look at the idiots in Mississippi who let Jamarcus Glover out of Prison early.
In 2008 was sentenced to 17 years in prison in the State of Mississippi for selling Cocaine.”

Let’s file this one under idiotic legal takes. The idea that we are locking humans in filthy cages against their will and given them permanent criminal records that essentially bars them from society for the rest of their life because they were selling a substance derived from a plant is beyond ridiculous and so wildly disproportionate that only a moron would defend it. This is why we need to legalize all drugs. Until we do, authoritarians with send state thugs to kidnap morally innocent people at extreme state expense based on a policy that has proven it’s a failure. Check out Portugal, you will learn some things.

“In 2014 Jamarcus Glover moved to Kentucky, were he met Breonna Taylor and started using her and involving her in his drug dealing.”

Pure made up bullshit. Nether Breonna or her boyfriend walker has so much as been charged with using drugs, let alone selling them. Facts will be easier to process once you stop inventing nonsense instead.

@26: “Late at night or early morning is preferred under the theory that occupants of locations where the warrants are served will be too groggy to offer effective resistance or to quickly dispose of evidence. The fact that it didn't work out that way in this particular case doesn't mean that the theory isn't generally sound.”

Radley Balko over at the Washington Post has been following this method for over two decades and has repeatedly shown it is not sound and all to often results in dead innocent people. The jury is in and this is a failed method. Your theories and anecdotes don’t change that.
29 “What happened was the definition of due process. A grand jury of citizens decided that there was not probable cause to indict. Is that the fault of the police? the prosecutor? the system?”

Why yes, all of the above. To repeat a point I made earlier:

We have an adversarial form of justice where judges are presumed to act as a fair arbitrator. Time and time again we see not just the defense, but prosecutors and judges acting as additional defense attorneys when it comes to the law. Prosecutors have absolute control over the evidence and just as they hide evidence that would exonerate innocent citizens, the don’t present juries in police trials (or grand juries in this case) that would lead to a conviction/indictment. On top of this, the Judge has the power to define how a jury interprets a law and can use their position to essentially deliver a directed verdict where they so define the legal interpretation of the grand jury that it leaves only one outcome, which is always innocent for cops and guilty for anyone else who is not a billionaire or a member of the protected criminal punishment system.
“You can think that they made the wrong decision all day long, but this was justice BY DEFINITION”

No question the right of the police to murder innocent civilians with impunity is written into their Union contracts and the legal system has been weaponized to shield them from accountability, but that is gamesmanship and has nothing to do with justice.

@42 this isn’t a Trump rally where people believe what ever you make up or intentionally misrepresent. The mortality rate of Covid 19 based CDC numbers at the time of this post is 3.2%: Or about 32 times more deadly than seasonal flu. If you want to take that chance knock yourself out.

Ah, so innocent woman is murdered by cops looking for cash and it's all legal.

I hope the protests get worse and worse and worse. I hope this country is burnt to ash and all its inhabitants are burnt to ash with it. Good riddance.

@45: "There was no window smashing."

https://komonews.com/news/local/gallery/vandalism-arrests-follow-breonna-taylor-protests-in-seattle#photo-9

@35 - One small quibble with your post: when someone uses deadly force against an officer, the officer is NOT "bound" to respond with deadly force. They may respond with other options, such as a tactical retreat and containment, less-lethal weaponry, etc.

@44 - It seems you have not read the transcripts of the jailhouse phone calls between Ms. Taylor and Mr. Glover if you believe the cops were acting on a single "hot tip." Glover insists even after her death on another call that she had his money. The DA says they did not search for it once the shooting investigation started, but I find that impossible to believe. She likely placed it somewhere or with someone "safe." Happens all the time.

What difference does it make when Mr. Glover was arrested and the time of the warrant being executed? None. They were not looking for him at her place. It does not matter one iota when he was arrested in relation to the warrant being served on her apartment.

Studies have found that people are the least alert and responsive in the hours immediately preceding dawn, which is why many warrants are run then. Is Balko comparing his data to the same results during the day? If not, they're meaningless. Running warrants in a country with 400-million guns on locations suspected of criminal activity will always be relatively risky and will no matter the tactic sometimes result in death. Only abandoning the drug war will significantly change that for the better for everyone.

Oh, and I don't watch law and order; never seen it one single time. My 30 years as a Dallas cop and supervisor inform my posts. I'm also quite certain that if you wade through my past posts, you'll find plenty of others you agree with, as you undoubtedly will with many others in the future.

Thank you for your responses.

2@1: "Good enough for civil court (preponderance of the evidence as determined by a majority of jurors), but not criminal court (beyond reasonable doubt by all jurors)."

You are changing gears to a definitional legal standard of what you originally wrote, but above you simply presented it as fact that one person heard a knock without mentioning the 12 that did not. Given that the police have already been caught lying and falsifying documents multiple times about what happened (changing the arresting documents after the fact to fit their narrative, claiming there was no body video available when it's a fact a lease one cop did have body video:

Breonna Taylor At Least One Cop Wore a Body Cam
https://www.tmz.com/2020/09/04/breonna-taylor-killing-one-police-officer-wore-body-cam-footage-shot/

I wonder why the police not only did not present this video, but actually claimed this video did not exist? Do you think it was just an oversight on their part, or do you think it's because there is no law requiring them do to admit it exists and the police never ask what's moral, not even what is legal, but only what is criminally chargeable, which is almost nothing for a cop.

We have 12 people who did not hear a knock along with one neighbour and the police with their obvious credibility issue claiming they did. There's no equivalency there. The greater concern here is your choice to leave these additional facts out of your original post, then switch to a legal definition when this was pointed out.

"I'll stipulate, only for the sake of argument, that this was executed as a no knock warrant. That doesn't make the cops criminally liable. "

We can't use legality as a standard since most criminal behavior is legal when committed by the police, to include this raid. Even if we stipulate that it was a knock and announce raid, it would still be unjustified as dangerous and completely unwarranted in this case. Despite the regular assertion to the contrary, I find no evidence that no knock, or know and announce raids do anything to increase the safety of the police, the innocent, or the guilty.

No one is arguing that it's possible to hold the police to any legal standard within a system designed to exclude them from criminal liability and paying Breonna $12 million in tax payer money does not absolve the police of their misconduct, or do anything to stop this from happening again.

That is the real issue here. The police cannot be reformed. I often point out cases of police abuse here so people often mistakenly believe I hate cops. I don't. I see a systemic problem that produces bad cops and point out the criminality to highlight the need for change. The police refuse to be reformed, so they must be defunded.

Judges need to stop handing out pre-signed blank search warrants to police as has happened all too often and they need to stop signing off off on innacurate cut and paste search warrants where many of the material facts are wrong, but they don't know and don't care because they rarely read the documents. They also need to stop signing off on unjustified methods such as we have in the Breonna Taylor case.

"No knock warrants are appropriate to prevent those that would resist, from having the opportunity to prepare to defend against the cops coming in. "

The problem with that definition is leaving it in the hands of police with little to no oversight to decide what constitutes a proper search warrant. The police have shown repeatedly that they take an exception meant for a specific extreme case and expand it as far as possible until some outside force pushes back on their over reach. It's only the embarrassment of innocent dead bodies like Breonna that keeps from from serving a no knock raid to everyone who is not rich, or part of the criminal punishment system.

A civil win does nothing to correct bad police behaviour. Until the police have skin in the game, nothing will change. The police are invested in never having skin in the game. The only workable solution at this point is to defund. It would save us a $12 million settlement and Breonna Taylor's life.

"If you encounter someone kneeling in a shooting stance, who has already shot you in the femoral artery, don't you think that the opportunity to de-escalate has already sailed?"

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” – Sun Tzu

The police created a bad situation where they were facing a kneeling gunman with their no knock, or knock and announce raid and no ambulance in the vicinity when things went wrong. If they pulled something like that in the military they would be reprimanded, demoted and most likely court martialed. Given that they want to treat a warrant like a military operation, they should have a similar standard.

This was a soft target. Showing up at 9:00 AM with gun in holster and knocking on the door would have been a better approach, although I don't think police should be out arresting money in the first place and the failed war on drugs makes all of this police corruption possible.

You cannot escalate a situation to create a negative response, then make your defence the behaviour you inspired. Well, you can if you're a policeman, which is why they need much stronger oversight and far more restricted powers.

I am arguing that it's immoral and should be criminal and you seem to be arguing that it's legal and that's always good enough. I'm not sure we can agree where we are talking about different things.

The ultimate test of morality is not doing to others what you would not want done to you, or the inverse of the golden rule.

How would the police feel if their own daughter was killed in this fashion? How do you think they would react if after she was killed, they were told it was all legal and all the paperwork seems in order? The only thing missing at that point is sending Breonna's family the bill for the bullets.

55: "It seems you have not read the transcripts of the jailhouse phone calls between Ms. Taylor and Mr. Glover if you believe the cops were acting on a single "hot tip." Glover insists even after her death on another call that she had his money."

Yes, that would be the single hot tip, which was wrong. Glover was the single source of the claim that he made a few times. Perhaps journalists can tell you the danger of basing your actions on a single unreliable source.

"The DA says they did not search for it once the shooting investigation started, but I find that impossible to believe."

Yes, DAs have absolute immunity and lie just as often as police with the same lack of consequences. The idea that the money was somehow hid under these circumstances seems preposterous to me, but not as preposterous as the notion that the police place the lives of people at risk in their endless attempt to arrest money. It's a system corrupt to it's core and goes a long way in explaining why so many marginalized communities see the police as the enemy.

"What difference does it make when Mr. Glover was arrested and the time of the warrant being executed? None. They were not looking for him at her place."

This one is interesting. You make a good point that police lie all the time and often for no good reason. In fact, it's more correct to say they simply never tell the truth, but in this case they did have a motivation to forge the times in the documents. I suspect hey were embarrassed to admit they killed an innocent women on a treasure hunt and hoped to convince the media there were there looking for to arrest the very person they had arrested an hour earlier.

That and I believe it's against the law for police to knowing falsify documents like this, but you and I know they do it all the time without consequence.

"Studies have found that people are the least alert and responsive in the hours immediately preceding dawn, which is why many warrants are run then. Is Balko comparing his data to the same results during the day?"

I've heard about these studies, but never actually seen one. Can you provide a link?

It would be hard for Balko to make that comparison since almost all no knock warrants are served in the dead of night, but do you really think Breonna Taylor, who they themselves notes was a soft target was a threat? Because if so, everything meets the definition of a threat.
Killing a cop means either life in prison, or the death penalty depending on where you are. All but the most hardened criminals will do all they can to avoid a sanction like that.

No doubt serving warrants is dangerous work under the best of circumstances, but risk comes with the job and I have seen no evidence beyond police anecdotes it keeps anyone safe. I seem lots of evidence it doesn't.

"Oh, and I don't watch law and order; never seen it one single time. My 30 years as a Dallas cop and supervisor inform my posts."

That was a gratuitous immature insult on my part. I apologize.

@57 - It's not a tip when the person who allegedly commits the act admits to it; that's a confession of sorts. Taylor herself acknowledges the money angle in these conversations.

Alas, no, I cannot provide the link you requested; I don't typically save things I read, especially from many years ago, and I'm not inclined to spend time hunting it down. The fact that you've heard of it suggests it's common knowledge that such a study or studies exist out there somewhere.

Now, I was never assigned to Narcotics, and all my operational experience is in Patrol, but I never, ever lied about anything related to my job duties, ever. I don't believe any of the officers I socialized with regularly and respected did, either. Aside from the morality of it, as a practical matter, there is very rarely any point in lying.

That said, of course, there are plenty of officers who do lie, either on occasion or regularly. Our department had a list of over 50 officers (out of 3,800) at one point who could not testify in court due to their history of verified lying. Why they were not fired is beyond me. As a first-line supervisor, termination was always my recommendation for confirmed cases of lying. But I've been beating the drum about accountability since long before I retired.

We also had internal studies (that I also cannot link) that found that officers assigned to Narcotics and Vice were more prone to give in to perceived pressure to lie, either due to zealotry run amok or in pursuit of some arbitrary performance goal. As a result, close and effective supervision was considered imperative...if not often achieved.

As I recall, the bulk of our true scandals stemmed from the activities of these two divisions. The Vice Unit was actually disbanded a couple of years ago to permanently solve problems there, but it's now being reformed anew apparently.

@52: You say that (2nd para) because it gives you a perverse satisfaction of 'I told you so'?

@41- Explain to me how the police's "need" to get into an apartment with the evidence intact can possibly justify creating a situation where people get killed.

And how many dead bystanders are you willing to trade for the evidence to convict some drug dealers?

If the answer to that query is anything exceeding "zero," you are truly an abominable excuse for a human being.

Radley Balko at the Washington Post has been following this case and just wrote an oped worth reading. He clears up many of the misperceptions people have posted in this thread:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/24/correcting-misinformation-about-breonna-taylor/

Thank you Luddite5 for your excellent comments. And compassion. Also dvs99.

It is perfectly clear that if you are not very wealthy and are not embedded deeply in this criminal justice system that we are seriously disadvantaged to expect any real justice from this system.

There would not be people protesting in the streets and demanding positive change if this legal system worked for us. It does not. Because something is legal does not make it moral.
There is plenty in history that proves that.

A woman was murdered in her bed while she slept. There is no justification for that no matter how you play it. You would play it if you are ok with fascism. And that is what this is.

She was a Black woman. What if she was a rich white man? How would that play out.

@64: Very well said Ivy.

What concerns me most is not that the officers were not convicted of murdering Breonna Tayor, on which reasonable people can disagree (I happen to believe it was the right decision since they are responsible for some, but not all of the sloppy work that led to Breonna's death).

What concerns me are the many who defend this failed raid as business as usually and systematically misrepresent all the facts to support that view.

This is the same issue we have with reform generally. We can't get the other side to even admit something went wrong when an innocent black women is killed during raid that should not have even involved her. To the extend some admit there was any problem, they frame it as an "unfortunate tragedy," like a lightening strike, as if everything was done just great, but somehow things mysteriously went wrong.

The supreme court has been clear that no-knock raids should be confined to situations that pose a direct threat to the police. That is why you see so many people incorrectly claiming this was a knock and announce raid despite not only 12 people not hearing the police announce themselves, but the one who claims he did hear them announce said he did not hear them announce the first 2 times he was interviewed before changing his story.

In practice both no knock and knock and announce raids are bad and as the Supreme Counrt determined heavily restricted, but there legal footing is with pushing the knock and announce raid. That both create bad outcomes is irrelevant to them as long as they win the legal argument. The police admitted this was a soft target with little risk. In fact, they declined to use the Swat team for just that reason. Some people keep referring to some imaginary study they read somewhere they can't produce claiming that no knock raids are more effective. Are we really going to base police policy on imaginary studies their defenders can't produce, because that's how we do it now and the result is Breonna Taylor.

Once police officer during the raid had body camera footage and they refused to release it. Don't you think they would have it on every network if the many false claims made in their defence here were true? This is something the police learned from the murder of George Floyd. Whatever not releasing video footage costs you, releasing it and having people see the truth is worse.

The police also made a series of mistakes and have a history of failed no knock raids that led to dead innocent people in the past. This is indefensible. We did not go into this here, but the police clearly tried to frame Walker for Breonna's death when they charged him for defending himself. Public outrage is the only thing that kept that strategy from working.

This is an area where clearly we need reform the system and it's clear that will never happen. That is how defund becomes the only viable alternative.