I keep seeing the allegation that the police who raided Breonna Taylor mistakenly raided the wrong house. This is not true. Her name was on the warrant.
But that makes it quite a bit worse. This was not an innocent mistake. The police *meant* to subject Taylor . . . /1
But that makes it quite a bit worse. This was not an innocent mistake. The police *meant* to subject Taylor . . . /1
. . . to dangerous, volatile tactics despite (1) scant evidence against her, (2) the purpose of this raid was to *investigate*, not arrest, and (3) these tactics are *designed* to inflict terror and trauma on people who have yet to even be charged, much less convicted. /2
Cops do make mistakes and raid the wrong house. But the bigger problems here are the frequency with which cops use these tactics in the first place; that they use them on people merely suspected of nonviolent, consensual crimes; and how little evidence they need to do so. /3
We also need to look at how little scrutiny judges give to search warrant requests before authorizing such violence. The search warrant for Taylor’s home should never have been granted. And as I wrote this week, the no-knock portion was actually illegal. /4
It defied a Supreme Court ruling. So did 95% of the no-knock warrants I reviewed in Little Rock in 2018. Yet judges signed these warrants anyway.
The scandal here isn’t that the cops made a mistake. It’s what we’re letting them do intentionally.
/end
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
The scandal here isn’t that the cops made a mistake. It’s what we’re letting them do intentionally.
/end
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
