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Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

usatoday.com

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Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#91

Post by raxxorrax »

magnusss wrote: post #27
hkai wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, would you agree that the wording of the article tries to create an impression that the police fired first, and tries to downplay the fact that the boyfriend fired first? I do not disagree that the police was wrong to storm the place, but I think that given the well-known bias of NYT, they are trying to create more rage in the community by creating an impression that the police fired first.

Exactly this. The single most important question with a shootout is “Who fired the first shot?” The Times clearly misleads the reader to think the police fired first after a “brief confrontation,” only later to reveal that this confrontation was the police being shot at by the boyfriend. The fact that the Times did not report the sequence of shots in that straightforward way (in the purportedly dispassionate “What Ha…

But it can also lead to prejudgement if you reduce the events of what had transpired to that question.

I also understood it that it is not the fact the police responded in kind that is criticised, instead they question the viability of these no-knock raids in general.

Maybe the order could have been better, but I don't see a real problem here.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#92

Post by josefx »

jussij wrote: post #57
hkai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hate that there seems to be a point of view that the US police and justice system is the worst in the world. I can attest that in most of the other countries of the world, you can't point a gun at the police and get away with it. Most importantly, you can't even talk about this case in the media, you can't sue the government, you can't hire a lawyer to fight against the government, your family will be threaten…

> I can attest that in most of the other countries of the world, I'm not sure to which countries you are referring. But in many countries around the world this problem is greatly reduced, if not eliminated only because these countries also have strict gun laws that stop this happening.

It is interesting that the presence of guns is regarded as something that makes police work a lot harder and dangerous in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world, while the training of new officers is limited to weeks instead of years.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#93

Post by yaur »

codezero wrote: post #59
yaur wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't believe that anyone thought that having plain-clothed cops serve a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night with no squad cars or body cameras for a case where the suspect was already in custody made sense. It also doesn't seem like they were expecting armed resistance, probably because they knew the suspect was in custody. Instead, I suspect that these are dirty cops who were essentially trying to…

Oh wow. That may be taking it too far, but is there a reason to believe that might be a possible scenario here?

They claimed that they announced themselves which suggests that they didn't know that the warrant they were serving was no-knock.

Their shots apparently hit the apartment above. With a breaching entry and an unknown target, random positioning in the horizontal plane may be expected but in the vertical plane it is definitely not. That suggests that they were holstered when they kicked in the door. Further, the gunner shot once and hit while the "police" shot many times and only managed to hit his girlfriend which suggests that they were much more panicked than someone that was asleep 1 minute before the encounter started.

what does the evidence look like when the police decided to rob you?

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#94

Post by baddox »

plorkyeran wrote: post #90
hkai wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask why? I assume this is because many people think it is better that a left-leaning newspaper doesn't publish right-wing opinion pieces, but I would think that this creates a "bubble" and prevents readers from challenging their own opinions. A reduced version of this question would be: if Hitler/Xi/Kim were to publish an opinion piece in NYT, should they reject it or should they publish it?

"A US Senator thinks we should deploy the military domestically to murder protestors" is pretty important news that the NYT should be covering, and I think there's a fair argument for publishing the piece as part of that coverage. That isn't what the NYT did though; they dropped it as an opinion piece that they implicitly endorsed. Newspapers fairly regularly print opinion pieces that run contrary to the normal bias…

Of course news agencies should report that the US Senator has that opinion. There are plenty of news agencies that reported on the fact that the NYT published this opinion piece, for instance, and I don’t think people are too upset about those reports. It’s the publishing of the opinion piece that is the issue.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#95

Post by reitanqild »

mistermann wrote: post #87
eitland wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome to hacker news, this must not be a surprise. I've been here for over ten years in some form or another so it is no surprise by now :-) In fact while I really like HN I sometimes have to laugh at the voting patterns here. E.g. Last week I think I got a bunch of downvotes for describing my first hand experience with something that everyone was suddenly an expert on :-) > I’m a “new” manager, and I am a terrib…

HN is one of the highest concentrations of intelligence on the planet, and much could be learned from voting patterns of this demographic. But as far as I can tell, keeping the peace is all that matters. Social good is for other people to do, always and everywhere.

> HN is one of the highest concentrations of intelligence on the planet, and much could be learned from voting patterns of this demographic.

Probably correct for what I know. But that doesn't means that all results here are valid.

The concentration of intelligence is obvious, but that doesn't mean I don't see sloppy reading and weird logic all the time.

Intelligent people also have biases, also read too fast and doesn't catch the nuances, also become hot headed etc etc.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#96

Post by codezero »

yaur wrote: post #93
codezero wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow. That may be taking it too far, but is there a reason to believe that might be a possible scenario here?

They claimed that they announced themselves which suggests that they didn't know that the warrant they were serving was no-knock. Their shots apparently hit the apartment above. With a breaching entry and an unknown target, random positioning in the horizontal plane may be expected but in the vertical plane it is definitely not. That suggests that they were holstered when they kicked in the door. Further, the gunner…

Evidence looks like the police came in unprofessionally, unprepared, and embarrassed. This is not excusable. They are lucky more lives weren’t lost.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#97

Post by ncallaway »

JamesBarney wrote: post #71
newacct583 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? How about: they should be held responsible for the preventable death of this woman in a situation they directly and deliberately created? Is that not the problem? I don't think anyone is demanding a first degree murder conviction here. They didn't walk in with the intent to kill her. But they sure as shit did kill her, and it's all their fau…

Is the bad guy a couple of cops who we hold to the impossible standard of not returning fire? Or are no-knock warrants the bad guy which routinely cause deaths for the sole purpose of keeping some drugs from being flushed down the toilet? Because one of these is very easy to fix and would 100% mean Taylor would still be alive. The other would be super difficult to fix and who knows if it would have saved her life.

There can be multiple people at fault for a situation.

The answer is: both should be addressed.

The officers should be thoroughly investigated for this incident by an independent third party. If the facts support it they should be charged with the most advanced crime that the facts support (e.g. manslaughter).

Simultaneously, we should immediately discontinue and abandon no-knock warrants. If they're not abandoned entirely we should radically alter the burden of proof required to obtain one from probable cause to clear and convincing evidence.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#98

Post by ncallaway »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #2

Injuries: none Forced Entry: no

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.

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#99

Post by mistermann »

reitanqild wrote: post #95
mistermann wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is one of the highest concentrations of intelligence on the planet, and much could be learned from voting patterns of this demographic. But as far as I can tell, keeping the peace is all that matters. Social good is for other people to do, always and everywhere.

> HN is one of the highest concentrations of intelligence on the planet, and much could be learned from voting patterns of this demographic. Probably correct for what I know. But that doesn't means that all results here are valid. The concentration of intelligence is obvious, but that doesn't mean I don't see sloppy reading and weird logic all the time. Intelligent people also have biases, also read too fast and does…

You are correct. It is not difficult to find at least one single fault in any human being.

It seems interesting that a community whose members overwhelmingly work in logical domains, also struggles being consistently logical on an aggregate basis.

And not just that, the abstract topic itself is...rather touchy.

Might there be something interesting to learn here?

Re: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report

#100

Post by hkai »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #61
hkai wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's classical case where there is enough evidence for a wrongful death civil lawsuit (which will typically end with a 5-10 million dollars settlement), but there is not enough evidence to convict the officers (or the boyfriend) of a crime in a criminal case.

Qualified immunity would probably make that civil lawsuit much more difficult.

Not sure - it seems that every well-known police murder case ended with a multi-million-dollar settlement, even though officers were often acquitted. Wikipedia has details on these.
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