Hughley, D. L - How to Survive America by Hughley D. L

Author:Hughley, D. L [Hughley, D. L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Custom House
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Breonna Taylor was asleep in her own apartment, so how could she be to blame for her own death? What could she have done differently except not lived there? On March 13, 2020, Louisville cops bashed in her door and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, thought they were intruders, so he fired at them. When the cops fired back, they killed Breonna. No, we can’t even sleep in safety.

When I lived on 135th and Avalon, if somebody crashed in my door in the middle of the night without announcing who they were, I would assume something bad was happening. And if I had a weapon, I would use it. I mean, even the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock.

And whatever happened to the “castle doctrine” that white people always like to throw around when they shoot Black people? Whatever happened to “stand your ground”? It’s okay for George Zimmerman to shoot Trayvon or Michael Drejka to kill Markeis McGlockton, but not for Kenneth Walker to shoot an intruder? It’s okay for Amber Guyger to go into the wrong apartment and kill Botham Jean or Mark and Patricia McCloskey to aim guns at peaceful protesters and cite the castle doctrine, but not for a Black dude. So what happened when Breonna’s boyfriend shot at what he thought were intruders? The cops murdered his girlfriend and then charged him with attempted murder.

To believe that the cops knocked and announced themselves properly is to believe that they did those two things correctly while doing everything else incorrectly. They were supposed to have an ambulance on standby, but they sent it away. Their warrant was executed late at night for no reason, since the main suspect was already in custody. They altered police records. They did everything wrong, but somehow we’re supposed to believe they knocked and announced themselves.

It’s too late for Breonna, but that’s why Breonna’s Law seeks to ban “no-knock” warrants and requires active body cameras when police serve a warrant.

A lot of places have already restricted or banned no-knock warrants, because the police fuck up and kill people. In 2017, the New York Times did an investigation that found that at least eighty-one civilians had died in raids like these between 2010 and 2016. And a lot of times, the authorities raid the wrong place and kill innocent people, including a seven-year-old girl in Detroit and a sixty-eight-year-old grandfather in Framingham, Massachusetts. And of course these are mostly Black and brown people. How the fuck do you get the address wrong for Black people? Our addresses have three numbers in them. 132 Malcolm X Boulevard. White people get rich, and then their address is like a tasting menu: 1958 Pinot Grigio Circle in Lower Hidden Valley Ranch Estates, Wyoming. That’s an address that’s easy to fuck up, yet nobody’s raiding that place.

Why the hell didn’t the police have body cameras? If they had them, why weren’t they on? How is it that every other cop who showed up at the scene after the shooting had

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