Oprah wants the White Louisville cops who shot and killed Breonna Taylor charged and has financed 26 billboards in Taylor's hometown of Louisville calling for such charges as the late Taylor graces the cover of Winfrey's 'O' magazine....By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest
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| Oprah Winfrey and the late Breonna Taylor |
One of the 26 billboards erected in Breonna Taylor's hometown of Louisville, Kentucky and financed by media mogul and billionaire Oprah Winfrey
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| Louisville Metro police officers Sgt Jonathan Mattingly, detective Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, Hankison fired by Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert J. Schroeder in connection with the March shooting death of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor |
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.
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| The late Breonna Taylor |
The other two officers who were with Hankison when he gunned down Taylor at her home this year, Sgt, Jonathan Mattingly and officer Myles Cosgrove, remain on administrative leave with pay.
Oprah is financing 26 billboards across the city of Louisville calling for the indictments, a billboard for each of the 26-years Taylor was alive before she was erroneously gunned down.
Winfrey also stepped off the cover of O, The Oprah Magazine, for the first time in 20 years to feature Taylor on the cover of the latest issue, her picture an edited image that Taylor had of herself before she was killed.
The controversial billboards cite a a link to untilfreedom.com
, a new activist group led by former Women's March leaders and co-founders Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour, and the billboards quote the 66-year-old Winfrey as saying "if you turn a blind eye to racism, you become an accomplice to it."
All three cops at issue are White, which has heightened racial tensions in the Louisville community, the city only 23 percent Black, and Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, just 19 percent Black.
The state of Kentucky, with Louisville its largest city in front of Lexington, has a Black population of a mere eight percent.
Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert J. Schroeder fired Hankison, saying he violated departmental rules and procedures, and deadly force standards in shooting and killing Taylor.
"When Hankison and two other plainclothes officers used a no-knock warrant to enter Taylor’s apartment March 13, he wantonly and blindly fired 10 rounds," said Chief Schroeder in firing Hankison.
Then a 26-year- old emergency room technician, police shot and killed Taylor on March 13 in her Louisville apartment after three cops barged in via a no-knock narcotics warrant, the city later outlawing no-knock warrants behind the Taylor tragedy.
Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a gun off when they entered unannounced, and Taylor, in turn, was killed by police due to no fought of her own.
Taylor was shot eight times.
Police claim her residence was suspected of drug activity and that a car registered to her was allegedly seen parked at a nearby residence under police surveillance for alleged drug dealing activity by an ex- acquaintance.
No drugs were found.
Taylor's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family, want the remaining two cops fired also, and criminal charges brought against all three police officers.
“By the department's own assessment, he [Hankinson] committed wanton endangerment, wanton murder and wanton attempted murder," lawyers Benjamin Crump, Lonita Baker and Sam Aguiar said in a joint statement of Hankinson, the detective who gunned down Breonna, a young woman in her prime.
June 5 would have been Brenonna's 27th birthday, had she not been gunned down in March by Louisville Metro police, Federal lawmakers like U.S. Sen Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, both former presidential candidates and potentials to be on Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden's ticket as vice president commented on her would-have-been birthday.
"Today should have been Breonna's 27th birthday but her life was horrifically taken by officers," said Sen Harris in a tweet on Breonna's would-have-been birthday. "Keep up the calls for justice."
Sen. Warren tweeted that Taylor is among so many Blacks victimized by racism and police brutality in America.
"We honor their lives by continuing the fight for justice," tweeted Warren, "for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Stephon Clark, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and all the Black lives we've lost to racist violence."
Taylor's shooting death by police drew protests in Louisville, and nationwide, which came behind the police killing on May 25 of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, the rally for Taylor also culminating in calls for systemic changes in policing.
Seven people got shot in the crowd during one of Louisville's protest for justice for Breonna, one critically.
Floyd's killing, like that of Breonna, has heightened racial unrest across the country.
A 46-year-old Black man, Floyd died when since fired White cop Derek Chauvin, the arresting officer, held his knee on his neck until he killed him, and before a crowd of people as the Black man pleaded for his life and cried out that he could not breathe.
Chauvin and the other three involved officers, all of them White, were immediately fired.
Chauvin has since been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter and is out of jail after posting 10 percent of a millions dollar bond.
The other three officers have been charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin, only one of them posting the $750, 000 bond a judge handed to each of them.
Arrested on a forgery charge over a counterfeit $20 bill, the murder by police of Floyd, 46, has resurrected anger in the Black community relative to Blacks questionably killed by anxious White cops.
The victims of those questionable police killings include Eric Garner of Staten Island, whom New York police choked to death in 2014, the same year Cleveland police gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a park and recreation center on the city's largely White west side, and the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old community activist who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas in 2015.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
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