Breonna Taylor deserved better than this.
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CW: Police murders of BIPOC, including brief discussions of means of death.
The murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department earlier this summer led to skyrocketing interest in antiracism scholarship among White folks finally waking up to the brutal realities of being Black in America. Floyd’s death — which followed on the heels of Ahmaud Arbery’s and Breonna Taylor’s murders in Brunswick (Ga.) and Louisville (Ky.), respectively — ushered in what can only be described as a massive racial reckoning.
Despite this newfound passion for justice and White people’s growing “wokeness” to the realities of racism in the United States, however, true reform is yet to be seen. This week, more than six months after a sleeping Breonna Taylor was struck with half a dozen bullets during the execution of a no-knock warrant in her own home, only one of the three officers involved in her death was indicted by a grand jury. To the outrage of the public, this indictment was not for Taylor’s murder; rather, former Louisville detective Brett Hankinson was brought up on charges of “wanton endangerment.” To the grand jury issuing the decision, the damage to her neighbors’ apartments was more deserving of justice than Taylor herself.
Even more damning than Hankinson’s indictment is the one that was handed to the country as a result. “If police officers can burst into your home while you’re sleeping, murder you, and walk free without any meaningful accountability,” writes Senate candidate Lisa Savage, “there essentially is no rule of law in our country.” Of the 21 state legislatures in session this summer, just three passed police reform legislation. But these new laws are far from perfect solutions: Colorado will now require body cameras and limit the permissibility of deadly force; Iowa has banned the use of chokeholds; New York’s new law incorporates characteristics of both.
None of them address the more insidious underlying problem: the deeply racist roots of an even more deeply racist institution. Given that restrictions on the use of lethal force still allow that force to be used, superficial reform is not enough. What we need is a radical overhaul of the practice of policing as we know it.
And yet, disagreement abounds as to what this overhaul should look like. Calls to “defund the police” have sparked significant debate, with the more radical advocates arguing for a complete divestment of public funding for police departments while their center- and right-leaning counterparts insist that reallocation and “reimagination” will suffice. The former group contends that the only way to create and maintain accountability for officers is to remove their power entirely; the latter camp believes cops are “just not as deadly as [they] used to be,” and that recent decades’ sharply declining violent crime rates justify maintaining the status quo.
Opponents of the defund argument might point to Derek Chauvin’s indictment for third-degree murder and Gregory and Travis McMichaels’ indictments for felony murder as proof positive that latitude is warranted. After all, if private citizens like the McMichaels can still be charged with murder, Hankinson must be the exception rather than the rule, no? Indeed, some detractors argue that instead of dismantling law enforcement agencies, we ought to “‘professionalize’ the police” with more training and higher pay.
But would de-escalation training have led to different results? Probably not. Limitations on the use of lethal force still leave significant room for officer discretion; split-second decisions are frequently afforded great deference, an approach further broadened by malleable standards of necessity and proportionality. Moreover, what good does de-escalation do in situations that never escalate in the first place? Taylor was asleep when Hankinson shot her; Floyd begged for his life as Chauvin kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes; Arbery was on a routine jog through a nearby neighborhood when the McMichaels gunned him down, unprovoked. Under no circumstances could any of these have been reasonably perceived as imminent threats to the killers’ safety, but Hankinson, Chauvin, and the McMichaels are all still alive while their victims’ families have been left to mourn.
Where is the fairness in any of that? What meaning does “protect and serve” have if the only people being served are those who look like the ones doing the protecting? “Defund the police” is so much more than just “candy to the one-liner simpletons . . . who [don’t] want to figure out what’s really going on.” It is a desperate cry for help, an impassioned plea for justice against a backdrop of injustices heaped on top of each other in a country that has made itself “great” on the backs of Black and Brown folks who had no say in the matter.
When we say to defund the police, we don’t mean divest or divert or diversify. We mean put social service workers on the other end of 911 calls. Abolish the school-to-prison pipeline. End the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent crimes. Expand access to mental health and crisis care.
When we say to defund the police, we mean Black lives matter. We mean say her name. We mean no justice, no peace. We mean Breonna Taylor deserved better — so, so much better — than this.
