Sitting on the green grass of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s front lawn, dozens of peaceful protesters in matching face masks and T-shirts on Tuesday afternoon chanted, “Breonna Taylor, say her name!”
The activists had come to demand that Cameron, a rising star in the Republican Party and the state’s first black attorney general, charge the three police officers who fatally shot Taylor, 26, inside her home while executing a no-knock warrant on March 13.
Cameron asked police to remove the protesters from his property, a Louisville Metro Police Department spokesman said in a statement shared with The Washington Post. When 87 demonstrators refused to leave, officers arrested them one-by-one, restraining their hands with zip ties and escorting them to police vehicles to be taken to the jail. Each one was charged with a felony and two misdemeanors, police told The Post.
“Due to their refusal to leave the property and their attempts to influence the decision of the Attorney General with their actions, each person was charged with Intimidating a Participant in a Legal Process,” a police spokesman said. They also face disorderly conduct and trespassing charges, both misdemeanors.
This undated photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar shows Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. Three months after plainclothes detectives serving a warrant busted into Tylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020, and shot the 26-year-old Black woman to death, only one of the three officers who opened fire has lost his job. Calls for action against the officers have gotten louder during a national reckoning over racism and police brutality following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. (Photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar via AP) Photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar via AP
The felony charge applies to people who use “physical force or a threat” to influence “the testimony, vote, decision, or opinion” of a participant in the legal process, like a victim, a witness or a judge. If convicted, the protesters could face a prison sentence of one to five years, according to Kentucky’s sentencing guidelines. The charge was recently leveled against a Kentucky woman who allegedly made threats to intimidate social workers during custody proceedings and a man who allegedly tried to interfere with an emergency protective order after he was arrested for strangling his girlfriend.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky denounced the felony charges filed against the protesters, calling them “overblown, outrageous and inappropriate.”
The 87 people arrested Tuesday included the Minneapolis NAACP president Leslie Redmond, activist Linda Sarsour and “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” co-star Porsha Williams.
The demonstrators on Cameron’s lawn, led by Until Freedom, the grass-roots group founded by Sarsour, belted protest refrains from their seats as neighbors peeked out of their windows.
“We want you all to know that you may see us often in your neighborhood,” Sarsour shouted at the onlookers, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
A spokeswoman for Cameron’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night, but the attorney general gave a statement to local TV station WAVE.
“The stated goal of today’s protest at my home was to ‘escalate,’ ” Cameron said in the statement. “That is not acceptable and only serves to further division and tension within our community. Justice is not achieved by trespassing on private property, and it’s not achieved through escalation.”
Until Freedom had advertised Tuesday’s demonstration as a “time to escalate.”
“It has been 116+ days since Breonna Taylor has been murdered by the Louisville Police Department and no one has been held accountable,” the group said on its website. “We must now escalate our actions so that the powers that be know, we will not stop until we get justice for Breonna and her family.”
Police shot Taylor eight times after forcing their way into her Louisville apartment with a battering ram after midnight on March 13. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired one shot at the plainclothes officers, whom he said he believed were intruders.
After Black Lives Matter protests spread nationwide in the wake of George Floyd’s death in late May, the calls for action against the officers involved in Taylor’s death intensified.
Signs are held up showing Breonna Taylor during a rally in her honor on the steps of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort, Ky., Thursday, June 25. AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley
As activists and Taylor’s family have argued that local law enforcement officials have moved too slowly to investigate her death, the city has made several changes in response to the backlash. In June, Louisville banned the so-called “no-knock” warrants that allow police to enter homes without announcing their presence and showing a warrant.
And more than three months after police shot Taylor, the Louisville Metro Police Department said in a letter that it had fired Detective Brett Hankison for violating multiple department policies and showing “extreme indifference to the value of human life” when he “blindly” fired 10 bullets into Taylor’s home. Two other officers have been placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
But none of the officers involved in Taylor’s death, including Hankison, have been criminally charged.
The investigation reached the attorney general’s office on May 13, after the local prosecutor passed it on because of a conflict of interest. Cameron, who is serving as the special prosecutor investigating Taylor’s death, has said his office is doing an independent probe and reviewing evidence provided by Louisville police’s public integrity unit.
“An investigation of this magnitude, when done correctly, requires time and patience,” he said at a news conference on June 18. Cameron has declined to set deadlines or provide a timeline for his investigation, despite public appeals for him to do so.
“I have a specific obligation to see that anyone accused of a crime is accorded procedural justice and that guilt is decided upon the basis of sufficient evidence, rather than public opinion,” he said.
After Tuesday’s arrests, dozens of people, including Taylor’s mother, sister and boyfriend, gathered outside the jail to protest and wait for people to be released. Around 4 a.m. Wednesday, activists said on social media that the jail had begun releasing some protesters, who emerged to cheers from the crowd.
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