Anger is like darkness: The more there is, the less you can see. This could occur to one now that there again is mob violence, this time over a Kentucky grand jury’s decision to not bring murder charges in the Breonna Taylor case. Most of the rioters are passion-blinded people being used; the users are astroturfing puppeteers who facilitate mayhem. What the two groups have in common is that neither is actually seeking justice, but injustice.
Speaking of which, lesser charges were brought in the case, as Fox News reports:
One of three police officers involved in the Louisville, Ky., drug operation that led to the death of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 was indicted Wednesday on criminal charges.
Officer Brett Hankison, who was fired in June, was indicted on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree, a Jefferson County grand jury decided Wednesday. Neither the grand jury nor the presiding judge elaborated on the charges.
A warrant was issued for Hankison’s arrest, and he was booked and released on $15,000 bail, according to local reports.
No charges were announced against the two other officers involved in the raid — Myles Cosgrove and Sgt. Johnathan Mattingly, who was shot in the leg and underwent surgery after the police operation that resulted in Taylor’s death.
Not delivering the mob’s desired pound of flesh has led to the now-usual criminality, with rioters in Louisville breaking windows, targeting local businesses, and lighting fires, and protests erupting in other cities as well. Fox News reports on the developments in the news segment below.
(Just before this article was posted, it was reported that two officers were shot during a Black Lives Matter “protest.” Their injuries are non-life-threatening.)
Unsurprisingly, this isn’t all spontaneous. Attesting to this are the below videos of riot equipment being delivered to protesters.
Bail project organizer Holly Zoller, board member of Louisville’s “Books to Prisoners”, delivered riot equipment in a U-Haul ahead of tonight’s violence. pic.twitter.com/7RTh6Fu8JE
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 23, 2020
Unloading the riot shields from the Uhaul #Louisville #BreonnaTaylor pic.twitter.com/F9KqzRB5lM
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 23, 2020
What should be asked, however, is: What’s being protested? Let’s review the Taylor case.
On March 13, police executed a search warrant at the apartment of Taylor and new boyfriend Kenneth Walker. It had been originally drawn up as a “no-knock” warrant, but prior to execution had been changed to a “knock and announce” one, according to The New York Times.
The Louisville Police say the officers did announce themselves before entering; a witness nearby corroborated this. Regardless, Walker opened fire on the police, prompting them to return fire. Walker later claimed he thought the officers were robbers.
Yet there’s more to the story. American Thinker added perspective, reporting August 29 that “Breonna Taylor was neck deep in the drug trade of her old boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. Police in Louisville had jail-house tapes of him bragging of her, about holding all his money, use of her car, and other helpful activity.”
“How were they to know she had a new boyfriend when they finally served a warrant on her house?” the site continued. “Or that new boyfriend had an itchy trigger finger and started shooting when police tried to enter?”
Moreover, Mattingly, the officer shot, was struck in the femoral artery and reportedly was “bleeding out” on the floor. Of course, even that’s secondary. When police (or anyone else) are fired upon, the immediate split-second decision is to return fire and neutralize the threat.
So why are there charges at all? “Authorities found that the bullets fired by Hankison traveled into the neighboring apartment while three residents were home — a man, a pregnant woman, and a child, Attorney General Daniel Cameron said at a press conference after the grand jury’s announcement,” Fox News explains. “Hankison was not charged in Taylor’s death, but rather for endangering her neighbors’ lives.”
Yet some believe the charges against Hankison may be a bone thrown to the mob to try to placate them (to no avail) and that the likelihood of an acquittal is good. After all, if he was engaging in lawful self-defense in accordance with procedure — and this will have to be determined — it wasn’t his fault that bullets penetrated apartment walls.
Moreover, misinformation “shared on social media suggested the officers showed up at the wrong house,” reported USA Today Wednesday, “but police had a search warrant signed by Circuit Judge Mary Shaw for Taylor’s address and for her.”
The above gets at the oft-missed point: The on-scene officers did not draw up or officialize the warrant — superiors did that. You know, the same people now hiding under their desks while the cops following their orders get blamed.
And that the latter do is another example of how our current unrest is a revolution aimed downwards. Higher government officials give orders, then sit back and do nothing as the guys who have to get their hands dirty receive blame, innocent people get hurt, and property gets destroyed and looted.
As for the mob and its Machiavellian enablers, they care neither about this nor the facts of a case. They riot because they can, and they’ll continue rioting until they cannot.
Of course, they claim to want justice, and they should absolutely get it good and hard — until the rioting stops.
Photo: AP Images
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
