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On Wednesday, two police officers were shot and injured during new protests in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, organized because no police officer had been charged with murder in the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman who was mistakenly killed. by the police six months ago, during a shooting at her apartment.
In fact, today a grand jury (a type of jury from the American legal system called to determine if the evidence collected is sufficient to initiate a criminal trial against someone) had charged only Brett Hankison, a former detective, with three counts of dangerous conduct. . , for endangering the lives of three people who lived near Taylor by firing bullets in their apartments. The other two police officers present in the raid had not been charged.
– Read also: 100 days of protests in Portland
The protests began immediately after the announcement of the grand jury’s decision: there were those who shouted in anger and those who cried, says the New York Times. For about 10 minutes 150 people blocked a road, then a dozen policemen arrived and followed the march of the protesters that lasted two hours. At that moment, she was detained by a group of police officers in riot gear who, after a few minutes, charged the protesters to drive them back with batons and sharp gas. Meanwhile, a policeman announced that the protest had been declared illegal and invited people to leave.
Louisville Police Chief Robert J. Schroeder said a person suspected of shooting the two officers, who are not in danger of death, was arrested. The officers’ injuries occurred during a live video from the Louisville Metropolitan Police, where officers were seen bullets and a voice yelling “police below.” The video does not show the wounded, only the screams and the bullets are heard: a police spokesman said the wounded officers were a few blocks away. 46 people were arrested during the protests.
First confrontation between the police and the protesters. pic.twitter.com/zkz6Xydg8Q
– John Eligon (@jeligon) September 23, 2020
Breonna Taylor, like George Floyd, is one of the symbols of the demonstrations that have been taking place in the United States for more than 100 days against racism and police violence and even on Wednesday the protests were not limited to Louisville, rather they have spread to others. Cities in the United States: Los Angeles (California), St. Paul (Minnesota), Dallas (Texas), Atlanta (Georgia), Seattle (Washington) and Portland (Oregon). In New York thousands of protesters took to the streets and in Brooklyn a group stopped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge; The same thing happened in Chicago, Illinois, where a neighborhood was closed for an hour while people chanted “We want justice, we want it now”; in Norfolk, Virginia, there was a sign reading “Breomas are everywhere,” while in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there was a contained vigil of 50 people in front of a Taylor mural.
Breonna Taylor died on March 13, 2020, when three officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove broke into her apartment, convinced they were arresting a drug dealer. They later said they introduced themselves as police officers before entering, but Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, and 11 other witnesses claim they had not heard their introduction. Because of this, when they entered, Walker fired thinking he was a robber, and in the next shooting Taylor was hit by police bullets. Hankinson was fired for “showing extreme disregard for the value of human life” for firing ten bullets, some of which ended up in neighboring apartments, where, among others, a pregnant woman lived with her husband and a 5-year-old son. None of her bullets hit Taylor, who was killed by the other two shots; in total, the three officers fired 32 bullets. Ten days ago, the city of Louisville negotiated a $ 12 million payment to Taylor’s family.
– Read also: What do we know about the death of Breonna Taylor?
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