Originally Posted by
xubrew
Agreed.
A really good friend of mine works for the LMPD and I've kind of gotten to know several other officers through him. My feeling on the issue is that the department was grossly negligent. I believe there were four houses where warrants were issued. Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend weren't targets at all, but it was instead her ex-boyfriend and her house was one of the places where they thought he might be. By the time they busted into Breonna Taylor's house, they had actually already found who they were looking for, so they shouldn't have been there at all.
Now, while I feel that is utterly ridiculously and almost unbelievably negligent on the part of the department, I also cannot get to a point to where I feel the individual officers are criminally responsible. There was a $12 million dollar settlement paid out to Breonna Taylor's family, and they deserved every cent of it. But the individual officers, in my opinion, had no way of knowing that they shouldn't have been there. Let's say the suspect they were looking for is the person who opened fire on the cops. If that were the case, this wouldn't even be a thing. For all the cops on the scene knew, that's what was happening.
The LMPD certainly failed Breonna Taylor, and her family, and the black community, and probably all of Louisville. But I also believe that they failed their own officers. Sending them into a dangerous situation to apprehend someone that's not even there because they've already been apprehended is a pretty big screw up. Even if this hadn't ended in a fatality it still would have been ridiculous. I would hope that the Blue Lives Matter people would agree with that. I hate that this happened. I grew up in Louisville and still have roots there.
Sorry for going GO and then going on a rant.