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Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

430 points by evo_9 6y ago

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
I find it very telling about the state of policing in the US when the law enforcement community knows they have the world's eyes on them, and they have the audacity to put that someone who was killed had 0 injuries. It doesn't help that the cops had the wrong address, and the person they were looking for was already in custody.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  Or the fact that they were serving a no-knock warrant. The only reason for a no-knock warrant is to prevent destruction of evidence, which means, practically, flushing drugs down the toilet. Well, if this kind of situation is the result of no-knock raids in society, I'm fine with missing some convictions because drugs got flushed. No-knock raids shouldn't exist. Neither should the "war on drugs." In this case, they were supposedly looking for a person. They would have surrounded the place. It's not like he could have vanished into thin air between the time they knocked and then had to force their way in. No-knock raids should never be used for arrest warrants anyway! It's insane to think that supposedly responsible, intelligent representatives in our government have led us to the legal situation under which this occurred in the first place.
  - trfhuhg 6y ago
    It wasn't a no knock warrant, though. They said they announced themselves. They obviously lied, but this lie exposed the truth that the raid was their own initiative for their own reasons. The lame warrant story is likely meant to hide the more nefarious truth that there are rogue cops roaming around and raiding random apartments as they see fit. Basically, police no longer needs to consult with courts.
JohnTHaller 6y ago
Injuries: none Forced Entry: no
- sdenton4 6y ago
  And this is what will be recorded in the official statistics about police use of force. Wonder what else isn't in there?
- ncallaway 6y ago
  Are these documents filed by officers sworn in any way? Are they filed under penalty of perjury? I know proving intent instead of incompetence here would be hard, but I'd like someone to at least look into that, as well as the killing itself.
mjevans 6y ago
This deserves state and/or federal investigations... EDIT: Contrast: In Washington State, an investigation about the death in Tacoma a couple months ago was just this mentioned in a news conference by the governor. Due to conflicts of interest the state is currently evaluating who can be assigned to lead a fully independent and unbiased investigation, with new announcements expected in the next few days.
- newacct583 6y ago
  The Louisville PD and the FBI have both announced investigations and the officers involved are on paid leave. Historically, that hasn't generally produced much in the way of prosecutions. Maybe in the current climate things will be different.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    Thank you, with: Breonna Taylor FBI I did see some actual news stories. Interesting that none were apparent when just using Federal or State as keywords.
  - mchusma 6y ago
    The concept of paid leave has always puzzled me. This would be my choice of punishment if I am ever given a choice.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwgeorge 6y ago
      there was a comment posted by rayiner that was quickly deleted >It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement. Police officers are employed pursuant to a contract. A contractual benefit is considered a property interest that cannot be taken away without “due process.” Hence police officers remain employed (and getting paid) until an investigation establishes they actually did something wrong. Private employers don’t need to provide due process so this doesn’t apply. probably deleted because it's wrong; deleted before i could submit my response: >It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement. you're wrong > “Property interests, of course, are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law—rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits.” so it's a matter of “legitimate entitlements”. in fact "legislature may elect not to confer a property interest in federal employment" and moreover in Bishop v. Wood SC accepted a lower court's opinion that police are employed at will even if discharge is conditional on due process. all this and more at https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/section-1/the-property-interest https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...
rayiner 6y ago
USA Today has the best coverage of this I’ve seen. The NYT coverage of this is awful: https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under the heading “What Happened in Louisville?” doesn’t mention Taylor‘s boyfriend shooting first. Instead, you need to go down several paragraphs to learn that fact. Which leaves the whole article deeply confused: at first you think police just started shooting for no reason, and then later you learn they shot because they were fired upon. Which of course leaves the reader with little understanding of what police actually did wrong. Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? Is that the problem? Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon. What the police did wrong, instead, is failing to respect black peoples’ second and fourth amendment rights. This happened in Kentucky, where if you barge into someone’s house in the middle of the night you can expect to get shot. Police barging into people’s homes in the middle of the night unannounced is fundamentally incompatible with what the Constitution and Kentucky law gives homeowners the right to do: shoot at intruders in their home. And as such the practice of serving these no-knock warrants is an infringement of that right. It leads to tragic consequences under predictable circumstances where homeowners are just exercising their rights. And of course, it’s doubtful that officers display the same callousness to the possibility of armed homeowners when it comes to policing white neighborhoods. It’s another one in a long pattern of cases where black people are murdered for daring to exercise their second amendment rights.
- e40 6y ago
  I recently canceled my NYT subscription over the Tom Cotton op-ed. Really glad I did. WaPo and ProPublica have my money now.
  - fourcommas 6y ago
    WaPo holds the distinguished title of being the first and only newspaper in the US whose editorial board endorsed the arrest and criminal charging of their own source.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dmode 6y ago
Feels like this incident is even more egregious than the George Floyd incident. In this case the police actually tried to frame the boyfriend, and probably would have gotten away with murder and convicting an innocent person if not for national attention
- thephyber 6y ago
  I agree, but video and a simple narrative goes a long way to getting support. Breonna's case has the following disadvantages: many Americans are willing to give LEOs benefit of the doubt when there is no video, it's "the word of the police versus a suspected criminal", the police union's hitpiece[1] in the media, and the slow wheels of the legal ("justice") system to investigate the facts which are never fully known in the media within days of an incident. [1] https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-president-disgusted-by-metro-councilwoman-statements-in-breonna-taylor-case/article_b4f80758-9b84-11ea-86b1-8b4ad95e2ce3.html https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-presiden...
deleted 6y ago
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ifPossible 6y ago
I don't want to be charitable to the police, but this situation is a strange one. If they were trying to bust a drug smuggling ring, it sounds like maybe there was parallel construction afoot. In other words, they may have been acting according to a supply of information beyond that which would ever be presented to the public, and could not be used to support a prosecution. Reading between the lines, there's a hint that her role as an EMT put her in contact with pharmaceuticals that could be siphoned from channels of legal medical authority, as she was an insider. That, as an insider, she may have been a sacrifice by illegal operators, or that parallel construction would be the only way to parry criminals that could have access to insider tip offs that allow them to perpetually dodge getting caught. This raises the spectre whereby, maybe there's more than one layer of misdirection, so where do you draw the line? How would you know whether the murder itself wasn't an internal turf war among rival corrupt operators using the aegis of authority? If she was a medical operator, acting as a relay runner from an official position of trust, for a smuggling ring, we'll never know. But the one other angle that bothers me is: maybe they were digital patsies. If the police used digital/mobile device sources of intel to determine that these were crooked operators, would they know or care if these were just regular people who had their devices targeted for squatting in caches and slack space, and remote relay/exit operations? Would it be believable that a sophisticated matador practice could be employed as warning canary devices, so the real operators could throw a kill switch, if their canary croaks? Hard to say... The police would use a no-knock warrant if they were corrupt. Or if they thought they had the real target. But they could be made to believe a false target is authentic. I don't think we have dirty cops operating a no-knock death squad. Which means they probably believed they were taking down a legitimate suspect. That only leaves open 2 possibilities by my count: She and her associates had compromised devices and were being used as canaries by real criminals, or they were the criminals. The one probable vindicator is if knocking her link from the chain of smuggling relays should have an outwardly observable effect on some unknown portion of the black market. If a drought is induced, could it be that her death disrupted the distribution of drugs? Probably not a crime punishable by death, but this would point to a rational reason to have been seeking her arrest. Meanwhile, there's probably enough noise introduced by pandemic lockdowns, and the notoriety of the press and media attention, that these other circumstances could play an outsized role in causing a drought in black market drug availability on their own. Furthermore, in some cases, drug gangs are so powerful that one cannot discount the idea that any such gang that might operate canaries might also retain muckraking journalists with bribes, who might even work for payment in access to drugs. At that level of paranoia, you have to believe this may even be full spectrum warfare, involving very powerful transnational entities, and that this is akin to covert warfare.
alkibiades 6y ago
and not a single shred of evidence it was racially motivated rather than an accident having to do with the fact that her boyfriend shot a police officer
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  Just, Devil's Advocate, but do you think the accident could have been the police kicking in the door of the wrong apartment? The boyfriend shooting at the police does not seem accidental, nor does it seem in any way wrong to my mind. If the officers had kicked in the door of the right apartment, the boyfriend would not have tried to take the officers out. Again, a completely appropriate and well reasoned response in my own opinion. If you enter private property forcibly, you should expect to be shot at. If you shoot back while having forcibly gained illegal entry to private property, you've committed a crime. It seems fairly open and shut to me. The only hold up is police and court system corruption along with a healthy dose of good old fashioned racism. Again, just my opinion.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    > If you enter private property forcibly, you should expect to be shot at. For someone outside the US this is such a crazy statement.
    - fiblye 6y ago
      If the point of contention guns specifically, or people defending their homes to the point of killing someone? America has more than just a few home invasions and murders. If someone is trying to break into your home, especially at night, there's a high chance that that person is not only willing to maim or kill you, but planning to do so. America has around 1 million home invasions per year and help isn't always nearby. Waiting can easily result in the victim being killed. The man who shot at police here was worried that someone would end up killing him or his girlfriend. Unfortunately, he was right.
      - gridlockd 6y ago
user982 6y ago
"Louisville public agencies [refused] to release records underlying the Taylor case, including the incident report, 911 calls made in the incident and Taylor's autopsy report. "The city has since released Walker's 911 call — but only after an attorney for Taylor's family gave it to news media hours earlier." That 911 call can be heard here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonna-taylor-shooting-911-call-details-aftermath-police-raid/5278227002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonn...
TomK32 6y ago
What happened to "THIS IS THE POLICE, OPEN UP" along with banging the door? The only situation where I understand a no-knock warrant is like when the police is actually targeting someone's computer and don't want to go through all the hustle of cracking the password.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  But they were in plain clothes anyway. Any gangster could knock and announce themselves as being the police.
  - dillonmckay 6y ago
    At least the gangsters would announce themselves, on your scenario.
    - tripzilch 6y ago
      So you could tell if they're police by the fact that they didn't knock. Brilliant! :-)
- Mirioron 6y ago
  I still don't see it being justified. The only time I can see no-knock raids being okay is if a person is being held hostage.
- renegading 6y ago
  Anyone can say they are police.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > The only situation where I understand a no-knock warrant Quit overthinking this. Police "understand" no-knock warrants because judges approve them and there are no accountability problems. You and I find it distasteful, but as long as judges keep approving the no-knock warrants at current rates, DAs keep using the evidence gathered from them, and defense attorneys can't get evidence gathered from them dropped from the case, all of the incentives align. Short of a massive cultural change, only a legislative restriction will change this behavior.
bregma 6y ago
The highest authority in the country directed police to dominate the public. This is how they dominate the public: fear, intimidation, the deployment of chemical weapons and physical violence against crowds, the 3 AM knock on the door. Next come the targeted killings, roving death squads, and the mothers of the disappeared protesting in public squares. It's alomost like an international standard being followed to the letter. Will no one rid us of the meddlesome priest? The poor police were just following orders.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Still hoping I won't have to reevaluate my amateur Brandenberg analysis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349804 (the US military is now even less of a concern, but I'd forgotten about all the other groups in-country, awash in small arms and light weapons)
nodox92 6y ago
This is sensationalist nonsense. The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the full narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open records. It looks like they only got the public narrative [1] which simply states “PIU Investigation” and are pretending to be shocked. In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not the initial incident report narrative. The forced entry checkbox and injuries only have meaning in the context of an offense and “Death Investigation” isn’t a reportable offense or incident, it’s just a placeholder. When they have a finding (justifiable or criminal homicide) then they’ll either complete a supplement or generate a new incident which will need to have certain flags and drop-down options set correctly for reporting. That any of this is being used as some sort of evidence of a cover-up is ridiculous. [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-Report https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc...
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  > The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the full narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open records. It's not "the narrative", it's the incident report. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you are correct that they aren't obligated to release the incident report. But they did release the incident report, presumably as a pretense of transparency and/or good will. The fact that it is basically blank shows that the pretense is just that, a pretense. > In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not the initial incident report narrative. I would expect the incident report to report the incident. This isn't confusing. Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report with the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see it eventually!" But that's no less damning: why is there a report with lies on it, and why is the report with the lies on it the only one the public gets to see? If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there, but that's a huge problem.
  - nodox92 6y ago
    > But they did release the incident report, presumably as a pretense of transparency and/or good will. No argument here; either release useful information or don’t. > Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report with the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see it eventually!" Forced Entry doesn’t mean what people think it means and is probably correct on the report. As for selecting ‘None’ for injuries on the victim of a homicide, it sounds like the program that prints the report did that on its own (obviously needs to be fixed as computers shouldn’t be adding words to official reports). I don’t think it’s fair to call these things “lies” or use them as the basis for conspiracy theories as others here have. > If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there, but that's a huge problem. I would argue that restricting public access to complete police reports related to active investigations is both a norm and serves a legitimate state interest (protects the integrity of investigations). I would also argue that once the case is indicted/closed, it should be made available to the public for inspection.
lgleason 6y ago
what does this have to do about tech?
renegading 6y ago
The body camera footage has not been released by the police that killed Duncan Lemp.
jefftk 6y ago
Incident report: https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-Report https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc...
Meegul 6y ago
I recently led the project completely rewriting the incident reporting system for one of the top 3 (by size) police departments in the country. This report wouldn't have even come close to passing client-side (or server-side for that matter) validations upon submission. An incident classified as a death with no medical information submitted? Usually the systems have some basic checks in place to ensure that, for example, if a theft occurred, property marked as stolen is present in the report. Likewise for any incident with some sort of physical harm: there's always a medical incident listed too. And a (nearly) blank narrative?! Even if that's due to Louisville PD policy, it still wouldn't have flown in the city I worked in. A simple assault (not battery, no injury) on public transit where the offender ran away and nobody could identify them would've produced a more thorough report than this one. If this is standard in Louisville and there are no safeguards in their reporting software, stringent incident reporting software ought to be added to the list of reforms we ask of them.
- nodox92 6y ago
  The nearly blank narrative is listed under the header “public narrative”. Many departments use this to separate out the actual narrative from what can be immediately provided to the public (often just a sentence or two). So, there’s a possibility the full narrative was withheld as it’s an active investigation. It’s also not uncommon practice for initial report narratives to be somewhat anemic when the follow-up investigation is immediate. Homicides being a perfect example where, in many agencies, all the useful details beyond “found dead guy” are in the murder book (i.e. case notes) outside of RMS.
yellowapple 6y ago
Scribd link to the report (as much as I hate Scribd, I haven't found a better direct source): https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-Report#fullscreen&from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc... Some "amusing" notes (and by "amusing" I mean "horrifying" and/or "the entirety of the LMPD should be fired and prohibited from ever working for a law enforcement agency again"): - "Forced Entry: N" (today I learned breaking down a door and shooting people is somehow not "forced entry") - "Bias Motivation: None (No Bias)" (cough cough bullshit cough cough) - "Public Narrative: PIU Investigation" (wow, real descriptive there) Can't really comment on much else given that it's entirely devoid of information.
swrobel 6y ago
Why is it acceptable to edit the headlines on HN, especially to something nonsensical like this? Original: Louisville police release the Breonna Taylor incident report. It's nearly blank HN: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

430 points by evo_9 6y ago

I find it very telling about the state of policing in the US when the law enforcement community knows they have the world's eyes on them, and they have the audacity to put that someone who was killed had 0 injuries. It doesn't help that the cops had the wrong address, and the person they were looking for was already in custody.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
Or the fact that they were serving a no-knock warrant. The only reason for a no-knock warrant is to prevent destruction of evidence, which means, practically, flushing drugs down the toilet. Well, if this kind of situation is the result of no-knock raids in society, I'm fine with missing some convictions because drugs got flushed. No-knock raids shouldn't exist. Neither should the "war on drugs." In this case, they were supposedly looking for a person. They would have surrounded the place. It's not like he could have vanished into thin air between the time they knocked and then had to force their way in. No-knock raids should never be used for arrest warrants anyway! It's insane to think that supposedly responsible, intelligent representatives in our government have led us to the legal situation under which this occurred in the first place.
- trfhuhg 6y ago
  It wasn't a no knock warrant, though. They said they announced themselves. They obviously lied, but this lie exposed the truth that the raid was their own initiative for their own reasons. The lame warrant story is likely meant to hide the more nefarious truth that there are rogue cops roaming around and raiding random apartments as they see fit. Basically, police no longer needs to consult with courts.

JohnTHaller 6y ago

Injuries: none Forced Entry: no

sdenton4 6y ago
And this is what will be recorded in the official statistics about police use of force. Wonder what else isn't in there?
ncallaway 6y ago
Are these documents filed by officers sworn in any way? Are they filed under penalty of perjury? I know proving intent instead of incompetence here would be hard, but I'd like someone to at least look into that, as well as the killing itself.

mjevans 6y ago

This deserves state and/or federal investigations... EDIT: Contrast: In Washington State, an investigation about the death in Tacoma a couple months ago was just this mentioned in a news conference by the governor. Due to conflicts of interest the state is currently evaluating who can be assigned to lead a fully independent and unbiased investigation, with new announcements expected in the next few days.

newacct583 6y ago
The Louisville PD and the FBI have both announced investigations and the officers involved are on paid leave. Historically, that hasn't generally produced much in the way of prosecutions. Maybe in the current climate things will be different.
- mjevans 6y ago
  Thank you, with: Breonna Taylor FBI I did see some actual news stories. Interesting that none were apparent when just using Federal or State as keywords.
- mchusma 6y ago
  The concept of paid leave has always puzzled me. This would be my choice of punishment if I am ever given a choice.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwgeorge 6y ago
    there was a comment posted by rayiner that was quickly deleted >It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement. Police officers are employed pursuant to a contract. A contractual benefit is considered a property interest that cannot be taken away without “due process.” Hence police officers remain employed (and getting paid) until an investigation establishes they actually did something wrong. Private employers don’t need to provide due process so this doesn’t apply. probably deleted because it's wrong; deleted before i could submit my response: >It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement. you're wrong > “Property interests, of course, are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law—rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits.” so it's a matter of “legitimate entitlements”. in fact "legislature may elect not to confer a property interest in federal employment" and moreover in Bishop v. Wood SC accepted a lower court's opinion that police are employed at will even if discharge is conditional on due process. all this and more at https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/section-1/the-property-interest https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...

rayiner 6y ago

USA Today has the best coverage of this I’ve seen. The NYT coverage of this is awful: https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under the heading “What Happened in Louisville?” doesn’t mention Taylor‘s boyfriend shooting first. Instead, you need to go down several paragraphs to learn that fact. Which leaves the whole article deeply confused: at first you think police just started shooting for no reason, and then later you learn they shot because they were fired upon. Which of course leaves the reader with little understanding of what police actually did wrong. Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? Is that the problem? Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon. What the police did wrong, instead, is failing to respect black peoples’ second and fourth amendment rights. This happened in Kentucky, where if you barge into someone’s house in the middle of the night you can expect to get shot. Police barging into people’s homes in the middle of the night unannounced is fundamentally incompatible with what the Constitution and Kentucky law gives homeowners the right to do: shoot at intruders in their home. And as such the practice of serving these no-knock warrants is an infringement of that right. It leads to tragic consequences under predictable circumstances where homeowners are just exercising their rights. And of course, it’s doubtful that officers display the same callousness to the possibility of armed homeowners when it comes to policing white neighborhoods. It’s another one in a long pattern of cases where black people are murdered for daring to exercise their second amendment rights.

e40 6y ago
I recently canceled my NYT subscription over the Tom Cotton op-ed. Really glad I did. WaPo and ProPublica have my money now.
- fourcommas 6y ago
  WaPo holds the distinguished title of being the first and only newspaper in the US whose editorial board endorsed the arrest and criminal charging of their own source.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dmode 6y ago

Feels like this incident is even more egregious than the George Floyd incident. In this case the police actually tried to frame the boyfriend, and probably would have gotten away with murder and convicting an innocent person if not for national attention

thephyber 6y ago
I agree, but video and a simple narrative goes a long way to getting support. Breonna's case has the following disadvantages: many Americans are willing to give LEOs benefit of the doubt when there is no video, it's "the word of the police versus a suspected criminal", the police union's hitpiece[1] in the media, and the slow wheels of the legal ("justice") system to investigate the facts which are never fully known in the media within days of an incident. [1] https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-president-disgusted-by-metro-councilwoman-statements-in-breonna-taylor-case/article_b4f80758-9b84-11ea-86b1-8b4ad95e2ce3.html https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-presiden...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ifPossible 6y ago

I don't want to be charitable to the police, but this situation is a strange one. If they were trying to bust a drug smuggling ring, it sounds like maybe there was parallel construction afoot. In other words, they may have been acting according to a supply of information beyond that which would ever be presented to the public, and could not be used to support a prosecution. Reading between the lines, there's a hint that her role as an EMT put her in contact with pharmaceuticals that could be siphoned from channels of legal medical authority, as she was an insider. That, as an insider, she may have been a sacrifice by illegal operators, or that parallel construction would be the only way to parry criminals that could have access to insider tip offs that allow them to perpetually dodge getting caught. This raises the spectre whereby, maybe there's more than one layer of misdirection, so where do you draw the line? How would you know whether the murder itself wasn't an internal turf war among rival corrupt operators using the aegis of authority? If she was a medical operator, acting as a relay runner from an official position of trust, for a smuggling ring, we'll never know. But the one other angle that bothers me is: maybe they were digital patsies. If the police used digital/mobile device sources of intel to determine that these were crooked operators, would they know or care if these were just regular people who had their devices targeted for squatting in caches and slack space, and remote relay/exit operations? Would it be believable that a sophisticated matador practice could be employed as warning canary devices, so the real operators could throw a kill switch, if their canary croaks? Hard to say... The police would use a no-knock warrant if they were corrupt. Or if they thought they had the real target. But they could be made to believe a false target is authentic. I don't think we have dirty cops operating a no-knock death squad. Which means they probably believed they were taking down a legitimate suspect. That only leaves open 2 possibilities by my count: She and her associates had compromised devices and were being used as canaries by real criminals, or they were the criminals. The one probable vindicator is if knocking her link from the chain of smuggling relays should have an outwardly observable effect on some unknown portion of the black market. If a drought is induced, could it be that her death disrupted the distribution of drugs? Probably not a crime punishable by death, but this would point to a rational reason to have been seeking her arrest. Meanwhile, there's probably enough noise introduced by pandemic lockdowns, and the notoriety of the press and media attention, that these other circumstances could play an outsized role in causing a drought in black market drug availability on their own. Furthermore, in some cases, drug gangs are so powerful that one cannot discount the idea that any such gang that might operate canaries might also retain muckraking journalists with bribes, who might even work for payment in access to drugs. At that level of paranoia, you have to believe this may even be full spectrum warfare, involving very powerful transnational entities, and that this is akin to covert warfare.

alkibiades 6y ago

and not a single shred of evidence it was racially motivated rather than an accident having to do with the fact that her boyfriend shot a police officer

bilbo0s 6y ago
Just, Devil's Advocate, but do you think the accident could have been the police kicking in the door of the wrong apartment? The boyfriend shooting at the police does not seem accidental, nor does it seem in any way wrong to my mind. If the officers had kicked in the door of the right apartment, the boyfriend would not have tried to take the officers out. Again, a completely appropriate and well reasoned response in my own opinion. If you enter private property forcibly, you should expect to be shot at. If you shoot back while having forcibly gained illegal entry to private property, you've committed a crime. It seems fairly open and shut to me. The only hold up is police and court system corruption along with a healthy dose of good old fashioned racism. Again, just my opinion.
- Kiro 6y ago
  > If you enter private property forcibly, you should expect to be shot at. For someone outside the US this is such a crazy statement.
  - fiblye 6y ago
    If the point of contention guns specifically, or people defending their homes to the point of killing someone? America has more than just a few home invasions and murders. If someone is trying to break into your home, especially at night, there's a high chance that that person is not only willing to maim or kill you, but planning to do so. America has around 1 million home invasions per year and help isn't always nearby. Waiting can easily result in the victim being killed. The man who shot at police here was worried that someone would end up killing him or his girlfriend. Unfortunately, he was right.
    - gridlockd 6y ago

user982 6y ago

"Louisville public agencies [refused] to release records underlying the Taylor case, including the incident report, 911 calls made in the incident and Taylor's autopsy report. "The city has since released Walker's 911 call — but only after an attorney for Taylor's family gave it to news media hours earlier." That 911 call can be heard here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonna-taylor-shooting-911-call-details-aftermath-police-raid/5278227002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonn...

TomK32 6y ago

What happened to "THIS IS THE POLICE, OPEN UP" along with banging the door? The only situation where I understand a no-knock warrant is like when the police is actually targeting someone's computer and don't want to go through all the hustle of cracking the password.

jobigoud 6y ago
But they were in plain clothes anyway. Any gangster could knock and announce themselves as being the police.
- dillonmckay 6y ago
  At least the gangsters would announce themselves, on your scenario.
  - tripzilch 6y ago
    So you could tell if they're police by the fact that they didn't knock. Brilliant! :-)
Mirioron 6y ago
I still don't see it being justified. The only time I can see no-knock raids being okay is if a person is being held hostage.
renegading 6y ago
Anyone can say they are police.
thephyber 6y ago
> The only situation where I understand a no-knock warrant Quit overthinking this. Police "understand" no-knock warrants because judges approve them and there are no accountability problems. You and I find it distasteful, but as long as judges keep approving the no-knock warrants at current rates, DAs keep using the evidence gathered from them, and defense attorneys can't get evidence gathered from them dropped from the case, all of the incentives align. Short of a massive cultural change, only a legislative restriction will change this behavior.

bregma 6y ago

The highest authority in the country directed police to dominate the public. This is how they dominate the public: fear, intimidation, the deployment of chemical weapons and physical violence against crowds, the 3 AM knock on the door. Next come the targeted killings, roving death squads, and the mothers of the disappeared protesting in public squares. It's alomost like an international standard being followed to the letter. Will no one rid us of the meddlesome priest? The poor police were just following orders.

082349872349872 6y ago
Still hoping I won't have to reevaluate my amateur Brandenberg analysis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349804 (the US military is now even less of a concern, but I'd forgotten about all the other groups in-country, awash in small arms and light weapons)

nodox92 6y ago

This is sensationalist nonsense. The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the full narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open records. It looks like they only got the public narrative [1] which simply states “PIU Investigation” and are pretending to be shocked. In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not the initial incident report narrative. The forced entry checkbox and injuries only have meaning in the context of an offense and “Death Investigation” isn’t a reportable offense or incident, it’s just a placeholder. When they have a finding (justifiable or criminal homicide) then they’ll either complete a supplement or generate a new incident which will need to have certain flags and drop-down options set correctly for reporting. That any of this is being used as some sort of evidence of a cover-up is ridiculous. [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-Report https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc...

kerkeslager 6y ago
> The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the full narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open records. It's not "the narrative", it's the incident report. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you are correct that they aren't obligated to release the incident report. But they did release the incident report, presumably as a pretense of transparency and/or good will. The fact that it is basically blank shows that the pretense is just that, a pretense. > In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not the initial incident report narrative. I would expect the incident report to report the incident. This isn't confusing. Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report with the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see it eventually!" But that's no less damning: why is there a report with lies on it, and why is the report with the lies on it the only one the public gets to see? If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there, but that's a huge problem.
- nodox92 6y ago
  > But they did release the incident report, presumably as a pretense of transparency and/or good will. No argument here; either release useful information or don’t. > Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report with the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see it eventually!" Forced Entry doesn’t mean what people think it means and is probably correct on the report. As for selecting ‘None’ for injuries on the victim of a homicide, it sounds like the program that prints the report did that on its own (obviously needs to be fixed as computers shouldn’t be adding words to official reports). I don’t think it’s fair to call these things “lies” or use them as the basis for conspiracy theories as others here have. > If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there, but that's a huge problem. I would argue that restricting public access to complete police reports related to active investigations is both a norm and serves a legitimate state interest (protects the integrity of investigations). I would also argue that once the case is indicted/closed, it should be made available to the public for inspection.

lgleason 6y ago

what does this have to do about tech?

renegading 6y ago

The body camera footage has not been released by the police that killed Duncan Lemp.

jefftk 6y ago

Incident report: https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-Report https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc...

Meegul 6y ago

I recently led the project completely rewriting the incident reporting system for one of the top 3 (by size) police departments in the country. This report wouldn't have even come close to passing client-side (or server-side for that matter) validations upon submission. An incident classified as a death with no medical information submitted? Usually the systems have some basic checks in place to ensure that, for example, if a theft occurred, property marked as stolen is present in the report. Likewise for any incident with some sort of physical harm: there's always a medical incident listed too. And a (nearly) blank narrative?! Even if that's due to Louisville PD policy, it still wouldn't have flown in the city I worked in. A simple assault (not battery, no injury) on public transit where the offender ran away and nobody could identify them would've produced a more thorough report than this one. If this is standard in Louisville and there are no safeguards in their reporting software, stringent incident reporting software ought to be added to the list of reforms we ask of them.

nodox92 6y ago
The nearly blank narrative is listed under the header “public narrative”. Many departments use this to separate out the actual narrative from what can be immediately provided to the public (often just a sentence or two). So, there’s a possibility the full narrative was withheld as it’s an active investigation. It’s also not uncommon practice for initial report narratives to be somewhat anemic when the follow-up investigation is immediate. Homicides being a perfect example where, in many agencies, all the useful details beyond “found dead guy” are in the murder book (i.e. case notes) outside of RMS.

yellowapple 6y ago

Scribd link to the report (as much as I hate Scribd, I haven't found a better direct source): https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-Report#fullscreen&from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc... Some "amusing" notes (and by "amusing" I mean "horrifying" and/or "the entirety of the LMPD should be fired and prohibited from ever working for a law enforcement agency again"): - "Forced Entry: N" (today I learned breaking down a door and shooting people is somehow not "forced entry") - "Bias Motivation: None (No Bias)" (cough cough bullshit cough cough) - "Public Narrative: PIU Investigation" (wow, real descriptive there) Can't really comment on much else given that it's entirely devoid of information.

swrobel 6y ago

Why is it acceptable to edit the headlines on HN, especially to something nonsensical like this? Original: Louisville police release the Breonna Taylor incident report. It's nearly blank HN: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report