Breonna Taylor was justifiably executed just because she was near the shooter? — What kind of a legal and professional standard is that?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

24 September 2020

 

 

Introductory advisement

 

I write what follows as both ex-cop and former state assistant attorney general.

 

 

Lobotomized monkeys could have done better — as police, special prosecutor and grand jury

 

Visualize this scene:

 

 

The first officer to enter [Breonna Taylor's apartment] was Mattingly, who, in a statement, said he identified two individuals standing beside one another — a male and a female — with the male holding a gun with his arms extended in a shooting stance.

 

“Sergeant Mattingly saw the man’s gun fire, heard a boom, and immediately knew he was shot as a result of feeling heat in his upper thigh,” [Kentucky Attorney General Daniel] Cameron said.

 

According to the ballistics report, Mattingly was shot once by a 9 mm handgun, the gun that belonged to Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend.

 

Mattingly fired six shots back down the hallway.

 

Meanwhile, Detective Cosgrove shot 16 times, all in a matter of seconds.

 

In total, six bullets hit Taylor . . . with a ballistics report from the FBI concluding that Detective Cosgrove fired the fatal shot . . . .

 

[S]ince Cosgrove was justified in his use of force since they were fired upon by Walker, he would not be charged.

 

© 2020 Fabiola Cineas, One officer charged, 2 others not indicted in Breonna Taylor’s killing, Vox (23 September 2020)

 

 

This is legally ridiculous reasoning

 

It certainly would not have flown in the very crowded jurisdiction, where I was once a cop.

 

Our professional and legal standards required that police point or aim deadly force with a competent efforts at precision.

 

We emphatically did not have a blanket permit to wildly empty weapons at whatever person (or group of folk) were close to a shooter.

 

 

By this Kentucky' grand jury's logic . . .

 

. . . just as soon as someone shoots at me, I get to machine spray the general locus of wherever the shots came from. Screw the innocents and quasi-innocents in the same apartment.

 

Evidently, in the State of Kentucky, it is acceptable to spray living quarters with lead — regardless of who's in it, innocent or not — but Kentucky authorities do draw the line at shooting into surrounding apartments for no good reason:

 

 

Former Louisville Metro police officer Brett Hankison was indicted on three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment for threatening the lives of Taylor’s neighbors when he fired bullets that went through Taylor’s apartment into theirs.

 

© 2020 Fabiola Cineas, One officer charged, 2 others not indicted in Breonna Taylor’s killing, Vox (23 September 2020)

 

 

Presumably if I'm a bad and shooting seed in an apartment — and you're there with me — you can be executed without consequence.

 

 

The moral? — Once again, "authorities" continue their hate-inciting authorizations of police incompetence

 

With a System like this, one can understand why people are violently upset.