By Fløren Kyteler (they/them/their or xey/xem/xeir)
Hey, so this piece of shit is making its rounds again! As a Louisville resident living in Old Lou a block away from a police station, I’ve been following this closely, and I’ll have my sources at the end of this list! I was even beaten by cops and arrested for being out past curfew (an hour & a half before curfew) for protesting their brutality. AND let’s never forget that, even if all this was true, police aren’t supposed to kill people! Now. Let’s address these claims…
1) Breonna Taylor WAS an EMT she had that certification, and that doesn’t go away when you get a new job. At the time of her death, she was working as an ER technician with aspirations to become a nurse.
2) Entirely false.
3) False, but I can see why some people might take some things out of context here. Her ex-boyfriend called her from jail asking for help, which included picking him up when he got out. He also made another phone call to someone else claiming Breonna was holding money for him. This call was after her death. No money has been found in her posession, so it was likely a lie he told to try to delay trouble he was in elsewhere.
4) Her ex was under surveillance. They observed him going to her apartment.
5) It was absolutely Breonna Taylor’s name, SSN, address, & car registered in her name on the search warrant. See above info. However, we can find no evidence that Judge Mary Shaw who signed this warrant actually had this information when she signed it. It all came up after Taylor’s death. The lawsuit brought against LMPD by Taylor’s family highlights this, claiming it was a smear campaign to desperately try to find reasons to kill her. (The lawsuit was settled in a $12 million payout to the family)
6) Out of the dozens of people interviewed by dozens of people, only one claims to have heard anything. Police have reported they arrived at 12:40 with the first shots at 12:43. Her door was slammed in with a battering ram. How many minutes does that usually take? That is just simple math.
7) They were in bed at the time of the battering ram hitting their door. They got up, calling out, asking who it was (corroborated by neighbors), but heard no answer. When the door was rammed in, Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, fired one shot at the police in plainclothes, striking an officer in the leg. The 3 police then opened fire, firing over 30 rounds into Taylor’s & 2 other apartments. Taylor was the only one shot.
It’s also worth noting that the blocks surrounding & including where Breonna lived are a part of a huge gentrification scheme & LMPD keeps getting “calls” to shut down the businesses there. I know a state attorney who has personally received requests to find legal reasons to shut them down, but there aren’t any. They just keep saying police “get called there.”
Fløren K 