Bernie Sanders has called a Kentucky grand jury’s failure to indict police officers who fired the shots that killed Breonna Taylor “a disgrace and an abdication of justice” six months after her death.
“Breonna Taylor’s life mattered,” the Vermont senator said on Twitter. “This result is a disgrace and an abdication of justice. Our criminal justice system is racist. The time for fundamental change is now.”
Former Louisville Metro Police officer Brett Hankison was charged with three counts of “wanton endangerment” after firing 10 rounds into the 26-year-old black woman’s apartment building in the early morning hours on 13 March as police executed a search warrant, breaking down the apartment’s door.
Two other officers who fired into the apartment – Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly – were not included in the indictment.
Mr Hankinson was fired three months after her death for "wantonly and blindly" firing 10 rounds into the building, according to then-interim Louisville Police Chief Robert Schroeder.
Ms Taylor, an emergency medical technician, was at home in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker when officers used a ram to break the door to her apartment. Mr Walker, believing someone was breaking into her home, fired one shot towards the door.
Republican attorney general Daniel Cameron argued that officers Mattingly and Cosgrove were “justified in their return of deadly fire" because Mr Walker had fired first, he said.
That justification “bars” the office from pursuing criminal charges against them, he said.
Ms Taylor was shot at least six times. Altogether, more than 20 rounds were fired into the building, striking neighbouring apartments.
Her killing has sparked a global call to “arrest the cops” involved, galvanising a movement condemning police brutality and demanding justice in police killings of black Americans, with support from high-profile celebrities, athletes and officials across the US.
The family’s attorney Ben Crump said in a statement that the indictment “falls short of what constitutes justice.”
“The grand jury may have denied Breonna justice, but this decision cannot take away her legacy,” he said.
Following the announcement, he called the charges “outrageous and offensive".
“If Brett Hankison's behavior was wanton endangerment to people in neighboring apartments, then it should have been wanton endangerment in Breonna Taylor's apartment too," he said. "In fact, it should have been ruled wanton murder!”
“Say her name now more than ever please,” wrote attorney Sam Aguilar.
The former presidential candidate and senate’s leading progressive has demanded an urgent overhaul of US policing following the deaths of many black Americans by police.
“We have to rethink the nature of policing in America and reform our broken and racist criminal justice system," he told the Senate this year.
The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, which sparks international protests that have continued through 2020, was “not just an isolated incidenet.”
“It is the latest in an endless series of police killings of African Americans,” he said. “The American people are rightly demanding justice and an end to police brutality and murder. … We have got to hear the cries for justice that are coming from streets of this country.”
