Once again, a grand jury has rendered a decision in a high-profile case involving police shooting a person of color, this time in Louisville, Kentucky. As if on cue, predestined violent protests and civil unrest erupted across the country. Fires were set, and angry demonstrators continued their monthslong path of destruction, this time fueled by their frustration over the decision in the Breonna Taylor case. In what has also become far too commonplace, two Louisville Metro Police Department officers were shot and wounded Wednesday evening.
Taylor, 26, a black medical worker, was tragically killed this past March in an exchange of gunfire between police and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who fired a 9 mm pistol at the entry team executing a search warrant. Walker struck police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove returned fire. During the exchange, Taylor was fatally struck six times by police bullets. She had been standing in the hallway, alongside Walker, who was in a shooting stance and remained unscathed during the shootout.
A Jefferson County Grand Jury ultimately charged Brett Hankinson, now a former Louisville Metro Police Department detective, with three counts of “wanton endangerment.” He fired a total of 10 rounds, with some entering an adjacent apartment that contained a male, a pregnant female, and a child. Hankinson has already been fired from the force. He now faces five years on each of the three charged counts. The other two officers were determined to have been justified in firing their weapons.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office led the investigation into the execution of the search warrant. His was a difficult position. There are concurrent federal, state, and local investigations ongoing. And he would serve as a special prosecutor, an appointment due to concerns that local district attorney offices work too closely with the police departments they may be charged to investigate. The reason for the “special” circumstances was well understood.
But Cameron is also a black man. And too often these days, everything related to our criminal justice system is defined along color lines. For example, on MSNBC, former Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Cheryl Dorsey flippantly said of Cameron: “He’s skin folk, but he is not kinfolk.” Noted race-baiter Colin Kaepernick predictably weighed in with his take that the policing profession contains “white supremacists” and needs to be abolished.
And as usual, lies escalated in number and intensity in the supercharged case from the outset. Louisville’s Courier-Journal set about to fact-check some of the distortions, such as 1) police were at the wrong apartment, 2) police affected a no-knock warrant, 3) Breonna Taylor was shot and killed while asleep in her bed, and 4) Mattingly was wounded by friendly fire. More on all this later.
Defense attorneys and social justice activists often scream non-stop incendiary and inaccurate charges. Wildly inaccurate distortions of fact have recently led to violent riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Minneapolis. The Taylor case has undoubtedly followed a similar false-claims playbook.
First, police secured a search warrant for Taylor’s apartment. A former “significant-other” had once lived there. And while he was arrested at a nearby drug den, Taylor’s apartment was considered a location where drugs were stashed. The court also authorized searches for three other persons if located at the apartment. And while Taylor’s current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was not listed on the warrant, her former boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, was named. In addition, the grand jury determined that police did conduct a “knock and announce” warrant service and identified themselves. This also wasn’t an incident of targeting a disliked person, as was also falsely claimed. Walker, who fired first, was armed with a 9 mm pistol, while police were carrying weapons chambered in .40 caliber. The round that struck Mattingly was a 9 mm round.
Allow me to clear up several more misperceptions.
Beat cops do NOT complete paperwork and run the process necessary to secure warrants. Typically, case personnel works with prosecutors to secure warrants. Law enforcement tactical teams are then briefed on investigation details but draft the takedown plans, which they then execute. In the perfect realm, a senior agency official is then put in charge as the “on-scene commander” to make and give on-the-spot decisions.
Most of such warrants are of the standard “knock and announce” variety. A select few, due to the subject’s history of violence, are “no-knock.” But the distinction between the two doesn’t mean that police fail to identify themselves loudly before making entry. Instead, it is related to the amount of time you afford the inhabitants to open the door.
The Louisville case was NOT a no-knock warrant service, although that has been and still is being proclaimed as “fact” in Mainstream Media reports. Walker may very well have misidentified the entry team as intruders. But once he fired his weapon at them, wounding one of the officers in the process, they had every right to defend themselves.
Cameron defended the decision of the grand jury and decried the new era of “wokeness” that has flooded into our pursuit of justice:
The social justice awakening of 2020 has its roots in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2014 justifiable fatal police shooting of Michael Brown. The federal grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer at the center of that case helped birth the Black Lives Matter movement. And while BLM supporters claim to be fighting for justice, they demand predetermined outcomes, insistent that every police shooting of a minority MUST BE in every such case due specifically to systemic racism and the officers involved therefore are guilty and should be convicted of murder.
That’s not how our system works. That isn’t justice and certainly strips police officers of rights to due process and the presumption of innocence. But as Kentucky Attorney General Cameron cautioned, the standards are shifting. And that is not only unfair to the police, but it is dangerous. What eager, selfless, idealistic, young American attracted to law enforcement hasn’t taken notice? You are considered the enemy now. Assassination attempts are occurring with shocking regularity. This serves as an ominous warning. Foolhardy “abolish the police” initiatives may soon be rendered moot.
Good luck with attracting our best and brightest to the policing profession. After all, the demonization has its costs.
Today on “TNN Live”
We will launch further into the details of this story and what happened in the grand jury during our live show this morning (Friday) at 9:00 AM Central. We will verbatim share the transcript of AG Cameron’s detail of the grand jury facts that resulted in the determination of only one officer being charged in the case. Not a single Mainstream Media outlet has bothered to do that! That should not surprise Americans, but it does. Millions simply shake their heads to watch and listen to so-called Media “experts” still phrase reports as “factual” when they in almost every such case as Breonna’s are portrayed purely from the “Racial Perspective:” that is “white cops shooting a black citizen for no reason other than racial hatred.” Nothing could be further from the truth!
But what is more shocking than even the grand jury results and that Mainstream ignores reporting the truth is what our federal leaders have to say to the public about the grand jury findings. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighs-in with a statement that will blow your mind!
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