By Richard Mellor in California
Almost the whole world has heard of the killing of George Floyd, but there are many other cases of police brutality and killings working their way through the US legal system. The text below explains the context of the legal complaint that has been filed with regard to the death of Breonna Taylor, a ‘key’ worker who was gunned down by representatives of the Louisville Metro Police Department as she slept in her home.
What becomes clear to me, just with a cursory reading of the complaint, is that the impetus behind the aggressive police action that led to Breonna’s death is, along with the complete contempt and disregard for black life, the gentrification and the profit potential of private housing and urban development.
Rather than develop real housing construction, which is providing human shelter and which could revitalize an area by creating thousands of jobs, the poor have to be driven out and may be able to return only for low waged employment in a restaurant franchise if they’re lucky. The numbered paragraphs here are the introduction to the complaint.
Case number 20-Cl-002694, First Amendment Complaint
“There’s photos of tampered evidence and of the Russell development plan with “futuristic” models. There’s an alarming amount of negligence throughout the entire operation. 31 pages. There’s so much.” (Ashley Taylor via the KentuckyAlliance Against Racist and Political Repression.)
1. The primary purpose of this substituted first amended complaint is to assert additional and amended factual allegations to conform to the evidence.
2. On March 12, 2020 Breonna Taylor went to sleep. She was supposed to wake up the next morning. She was supposed to continue her mission and passion of helping those who needed it most. She was supposed to be a key figure in the Louisville community at an unprecedented time in history when women in her field were of the utmost importance. Instead, Breonna was woken up past midnight by banging on her door.
Breaking down doors with guns drawn
These men banging on the door would not announce themselves. These men ignored Breonna’s shouts for them to say who they were. These men had no probable cause or other legal basis to enter and search Breonna’s home. But these men, all in dark plain clothes, did so anyways, breaking down Breonna’s door with guns drawn. Despite Breonna’s significant other trying to protect her, Breonna was gunned down by the men breaking into her home. And while she tried to hang on for her life, she was then shot by another man who was firing blindly through windows. Breonna fought for her life for more than five minutes before finally succumbing to her injuries.
3. Breonna’s home should never have had police there in the first place. When the layers are peeled back, the origin of Breonna’s home being raided by police starts with a political need to clear out a street for a large real estate development project and finishes with a newly formed, rogue police unit violating all levels of policy, protocol and policing standards. Breonna’s death was the culmination of radical political and police conduct.
Crusade to target homes
As the factual allegations set forth further herein will confirm, a police unit went on a crusade to target people and homes in a confined area of Elliott Avenue in west Louisville. People needed to be removed and homes needed to be vacated so that a high dollar, legacy-creating real estate development could move forward. One of the primary roadblocks to this unit and the real estate development project was an ex- boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, who rented a home on Elliott Avenue.
The police unit’s efforts to clean house on Elliott became so outrageous, unlawful, corrupt and reckless that a bogus, no-knock search warrant was obtained for the home of Breonna Taylor, a woman with no criminal history, no drugs in her home, no targets in her home and whose home was more than 10 miles away from Elliott Ave. From there, the named Defendants made error after error, violated policy after policy and committed unlawful act after unlawful act, resulting in Breonna being taken from the Louisville community and from her family far too soon.
Reckless, wilful, wanton and unlawful conduct
4. This action seeks all damages to which the Plaintiff may be entitled as a result of the Defendants’ outrageous, reckless, wilful, wanton and unlawful conduct.
The full pdf file of this complaint can be downloaded here.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original is here.
July 8, 2020
