Beyoncé has become the latest celebrity to use her platform to advocate for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor. The 26-year-old emergency medical technician was asleep when Louisville police kicked in her door on a no-knock search warrant and shot her at least eight times even though no drugs were found in her home, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. In fact, her home was 10 miles away from the one where officers suspected two men of selling drugs, the newspaper reported.
Although the Louisville metro council voted unanimously Thursday to pass "Breonna's Law" banning no-knock search warrants, the officers involved in Taylor's death have not been criminally charged. The Grammy Award-winning artist penned a letter to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron on Sunday seeking an investigation into the police department and criminal charges against Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and officers Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison.
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“Your office has both the power and the responsibility to bring justice to Breonna Taylor, and demonstrate the value of a Black woman’s life,” the singer wrote.
It has been more than three months since Taylor’s death on March 13, and despite multiple discrepancies between the Louisville Metro Police Department’s (LMPD) account of what happened and what neighbors and a witness reported, no officers have been arrested or fired.
In a heavily redacted four-page incident report the police department released Wednesday to the Louisville Courier-Journal, an officer indicated there was no forced entry and that Taylor suffered no injuries.
Hankison is being investigated after multiple allegations of sexual assault were made about him, according to the city.
“This is unacceptable,” Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer tweeted about the incident report. “It’s issues like this that erode public confidence in @LMPD’s ability to do its job, and that’s why I’ve ordered an external top-to-bottom review of the department.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has called for state and federal prosecutors to look into the police department’s investigation, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. "The public reports concerning the death of Breonna Taylor are troubling," Beshear said in a statement on Twitter. "Her family and the public at large deserve the full facts regarding her death."
Beyoncé made a similar plea in her letter.
“Don’t let this case fall into the pattern of no action after a terrible tragedy,” she wrote. “With every death of a Black person at the hands of the police, there are two real tragedies: the death itself, and the inaction and delays that follow it. This is your chance to end that pattern. Take swift and decisive action in charging the officers. The next months cannot look like the last three.”
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