You know, as the world came together
over the past few months
to protest against racial injustice,
the name George Floyd has been chanted all over the globe,
but there's another name
which initially didn't get a lot of attention
but has slowly become the rallying call
for people crying out for justice and change,
and that name is Breonna Taylor.
CROWD: Breonna Taylor!
NEWSWOMAN: Public pressure is now mounting,
with protests and celebrities speaking out.
Breonna Taylor's life mattered.
ALL: Do you know what happened to Breonna Taylor?
NEWSWOMAN: Celebrities from Ali Wong, Kerry Washington,
and Cardi B saying her name.
Do you know Breonna Taylor's story, her whole story?
I want her family to know
and I want the state of Kentucky to know,
um, that we feel for her and we want justice.
NEWSWOMAN 2: The WNBA dedicating this season to social justice.
We are dedicating this season to Breonna Taylor,
an outstanding EMT who was murdered over 130 days ago.
For the first time in 20 years,
Oprah Winfrey is giving up the cover of her O Magazine,
putting the late Breonna Taylor on it instead.
Yes, from LeBron James to Orpah Winfrey,
Meghan Markle to the WNBA, the tidal wave of support
for Breonna Taylor has been swelling day by day,
and this support has even spread to social media platforms
like Instagram and TikTok, which is fantastic,
but it's unfortunately also come with downsides,
because if you are online a lot,
you've probably seen Breonna Taylor
being turned into just another meme.
You know, whether it's putting her name on a picture
of Rihanna's ass, or mentioning her death
in some caption of a random selfie.
And the truth is, it's, like, this is a weird amalgam
of a few things.
You have this relatively new phenomenon of using social media
to push for justice and reform, which is good.
But the downside of that, the downside is,
social media is a medium
that doesn't always do sincerity well.
It doesn't do selflessness well.
That struggles to give tragedies the gravity that they deserve.
And so you have maybe well-intentioned people
who want to keep the name trending
and they want to see Breonna Taylor get justice,
but now essentially using her name as a punch line.
Because memes are not the best way
to honor someone who has passed.
I mean, it's the reason Obama didn't dab
at John Lewis's funeral today.
And so today on the show, as painful as it is,
I wanted to take the time to either remind people,
or inform people, about the story of Breonna Taylor,
not as a slogan, or a post on your social media feed,
but as a human being.
NEWSWOMAN: Breonna Taylor,
she's more than just a movement,
a #hashtag or a moment.
The 26-year-old was an EMT working in emergency rooms
at two hospitals, and helping respond
to the coronavirus outbreak.
She loved to help people.
Breonna loved family.
She just was... she was a very sweet person,
and she went out of her way for anybody.
NEWSWOMAN: 26 and full of life.
This is Breonna Taylor...
etched in her family's memory.
Dancing with friends.
♪ Everything gonna be all right... ♪
Singing her favorite song.
Buying her dream car.
TAMIKA PALMER: She loved life.
She loved to be around friends and family.
She just, she had it figured out.
That's right.
Breonna Taylor was a friend, a daughter,
an EMT worker, working to help save people's lives,
and apparently, one hell of a TikTok dancer.
And by the way, it's actually nice to see the news covering
a black person's death at the hands of police
by using their good pictures and not that one picture
that makes us all look like we've robbed 50 banks.
I mean, you know Breonna Taylor was a great person,
because if she had jaywalked once,
the news would have been, like, "Frequent jaywalker
"and occasional EMT Breonna Taylor
was sadly killed by the police."
So for 26 years, Breonna Taylor lived her life
to the fullest.
But then on a random night, out of nowhere,
the Louisville Police Department turned her into a statistic.
NEWSWOMAN: On March 13,
as Breonna and her boyfriend, Kenny Walker,
lay asleep in their bed, plainclothes police officers
broke down their door using a battering ram
on a no-knock drug warrant.
Kenny, thinking intruders were violently breaking in,
grabbed his licensed gun.
NEWSMAN: Walker says they didn't say they were the police
before he fired off a shot from a gun.
The officers responded with a hail of gunfire.
Walker said he purposely aimed his gun towards the ground.
Sergeant Jon Mattingly was struck in the leg
and was one of three officers who returned fire.
Detective Brett Hankison was standing outside,
and fired ten rounds
through a closed and curtained patio door.
According to Louisville's police chief,
his blind shooting displayed an extreme indifference
to the value of human life.
The gunshots whizzed through walls, window.
Bullet holes were found everywhere--
in the kitchen, bedrooms, in a neighbor's apartment
with small children nearby.
Multiple neighbors called 911 asking for police,
only finding out later it was the police.
You know, almost every time we hear a story
involving a police shooting, I'm always shocked
at how badly trained and not in control the police seem.
Breonna Taylor's boyfriend was lying in bed,
heard his door get smashed in, grabbed his legal firearm,
and had the presence of mind
to try and injure the intruder by aiming down.
But the cops, who are supposed to be trained professionals,
they burst in like they get paid by the bullet.
And for anyone who has the audacity
to blame Breonna's boyfriend for shooting at the cops,
please answer me this question.
If America tells people to get a gun
to defend themselves from intruders,
but the cops are the intruders breaking down the door
without knocking, what are you supposed to do?
To an innocent person, there is zero difference
between a no-knock raid and a home invasion.
If someone busts down your door in the middle of the night,
you're gonna think that they're intruders,
not, "Oh, the cops might be here,"
or, "Damn, Uber Eats is coming in hard tonight."
In fact, it would be weird if you didn't use your gun
in that situation.
I mean, if not then, what are you saving it for?
To be honest, we shouldn't even be calling these things
"no-knock" raids-- that gives them too much credit.
We should just drop the euphemism
and call it what it is: a home invasion
where police get to act like they're in a video game.
The police break down the door without warning.
They shoot Breonna Taylor eight times in her own house.
And what makes the story even more tragic
is that the cops should never have even been in that house
in the first place.
NEWSMAN: Police got five warrants approved.
Four were for suspected drug dealers
and suspected drug houses.
Lumped into that with similar language
was the warrant for Breonna Taylor's apartment,
under the suspicion she was involved
with handling money and drugs
for an alleged Louisville drug dealer,
her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover.
She hadn't dated Glover in months.
A package police say they saw Glover picking up
at Taylor's apartment was likely a pair of shoes,
according to the family attorney.
And despite what officers were told before the raid,
Breonna Taylor certainly did not live alone.
When it was all over, police found no drugs,
no money in her apartment.
Before going into Breonna Taylor's home,
police were actually warned that she would be very little threat,
if no threat at all.
Yes. They used bogus intel,
and they came in guns blazing
even though they knew she wasn't a threat.
Every step of the way this investigation ran,
the police screwed up.
They made a million mistakes, which is a million more
than any black person is ever allowed to make.
And honestly, with the amount of mistakes
that the police made throughout the entire process,
I don't even know if it's fair
to call them mistakes at this point.
Because a mistake is something you do by accident.
But these cops blatantly ignored
so many protocols and so much information.
At some point, it moves from a mistake
to just actively not giving a (bleep).
And it's bad enough when you learn
what these people did in the heat of the moment,
but in a way, what's even worse is what they did
when they had the time to think.
NEWSMAN: Breonna Taylor was alive for several minutes
after police shot her five times, and...
(reading):
NEWSMAN 2: You see her boyfriend after the shooting
being arrested here in the parking lot.
Police tried to charge him
with attempting to kill police officers,
but those charges were later dropped.
NEWSWOMAN: A recently released police incident report
from that night is mostly blank.
It claims there was no forced entry.
It does list Taylor as a victim of a crime.
NEWSMAN 3: And under injuries, it says "none,"
even though Taylor was shot eight times.
You see, it's one thing to
"shoot someone accidentally eight times,"
but leaving her on the floor without any medical attention,
that isn't an accident.
That's just a blatant disregard for black life.
And on top of all of that, the cops submitted
a mostly blank incident report? Really?
You really couldn't think of anything
that you could write on that report?
Not even, "Oh, we (bleep) up"?
These officers are so bad, they couldn't even solve
the murder that they committed.
And right now, the attorney general of Kentucky
says that they're investigating Breonna Taylor's killing.
But it's been four months.
And in that four months,
they seem to find a way to arrest somebody.
It's been more than four months
since 26-year-old EMT Breonna Taylor
was shot and killed in her own home.
So far, there have been no charges filed
against the three white officers involved.
By comparison, though, this week, it took just one day
to file felony charges against more than 80 protesters
who went to the home of Kentucky attorney general,
calling for justice in Breonna's killing.
Every single day in America, we're reminded
that there are different criminal justice systems
depending on who you are.
There's one for the rich, and there's one for the poor.
There's one for white people,
and there's a different one for black people.
And apparently, there's also one
for those who oppose police brutality
and for those who commit it.
Now, I won't lie. The one bit of hope
that I have seen from this
is that the protests are actually getting results.
Because a few months ago,
almost nobody had heard of this case.
But now thanks to people taking to the streets
and relentlessly pushing for justice,
some changes are being made,
including Breonna's Law,
which bans no-knock warrants in Louisville.
But the truth is we have so much more work to do.
Because what happened to Breonna Taylor
is not just a few bad cops.
It's not even really just about the cops.
It's also the legislature
that gave them the power to break into houses,
the judge that signed the warrant,
the police department
that didn't act against these officers
and the county that charged the protestors
for challenging these rules.
In other words, what happened to Breonna Taylor
wasn't a failure of the system.
It was the system working as it's intended.
And that is why people are fighting
for the system to be changed.
Well, that's our show for tonight.
But before we go, I just wanted to remind you
that America is facing a nationwide poll worker shortage.
Now because most poll workers are over 60,
and coronavirus is still in the air,
many of them are understandably not showing up.
But fewer poll workers means fewer polling stations are open
and it also means longer lines that not everybody can afford
to stay and wait in, but the good news is,
most poll working is paid and in some states,
poll workers can be as young as 16 to join in.
Now I just wanted to say thank you,
because over the last few weeks we've partnered
with Power to the Polls to ask all of you
to join in if you can,
and over 60,000 of you have signed up.
So thank you to all of you who are giving your time
to save your granny and protect democracy.
And if you haven't signed up yet, but you want to join,
all you got to do is go to the link below.