
Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report - evo_9
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/10/breonna-taylor-case-louisville-police-nearly-blank-incident-report/5335929002/
======
rayiner
USA Today has the best coverage of this I’ve seen. The NYT coverage of this is
awful: [https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-
police.html](https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html)

A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the
police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that,
the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the
victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under the heading “What Happened
in Louisville?” doesn’t mention Taylor‘s boyfriend shooting first. Instead,
you need to go down several paragraphs to learn that fact. Which leaves the
whole article deeply confused: at first you think police just started shooting
for no reason, and then later you learn they shot because they were fired
upon. Which of course leaves the reader with little understanding of what
police actually did wrong. Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s
boyfriend shot at them? Is that the problem?

Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon. What
the police did wrong, instead, is failing to respect black peoples’ second and
fourth amendment rights. This happened in Kentucky, where if you barge into
someone’s house in the middle of the night you can expect to get shot. Police
barging into people’s homes in the middle of the night unannounced is
fundamentally incompatible with what the Constitution and Kentucky law gives
homeowners the right to do: shoot at intruders in their home. And as such the
practice of serving these no-knock warrants is an infringement of that right.
It leads to tragic consequences under predictable circumstances where
homeowners are just exercising their rights. And of course, it’s doubtful that
officers display the same callousness to the possibility of armed homeowners
when it comes to policing white neighborhoods. It’s another one in a long
pattern of cases where black people are murdered for daring to exercise their
second amendment rights.

~~~
codezero
context: I am a super liberal hippy. I'm really left, like, crazy.

I paused reading your comment at "instead you need to go down several" because
I wanted to test my current knowledge of this incident: almost nothing, I
know, hard to believe, given the claim at the start. (I've been under a lot of
stress at work, it's OK, I'm fine, thanks for asking though :) )

So I read the article... Here is the first paragraph under "What happened in
Louisville?"

"Shortly after midnight on March 13, Louisville police officers, executing a
search warrant, used a battering ram to crash into the apartment of Breonna
Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American emergency room technician. After a
brief confrontation, they fired several shots, striking her at least eight
times."

OK - so, I feel like I completely understand this is a complicated situation,
not one where the cops kicked down the door and started shooting.

1\. "After a brief confrontation"

This is an obvious "and cut-to," that is, I know lots of stuff happened here.
I would expect a reader who isn't completely engulfed in polarizing furor to
think about this for a second like I did.

2\. Gunshots after a confrontation

I think this might be contentious, or where this is all loaded up... When I
see "a confrontation" followed by "eight gunshots" \- I actually do assume
there was some reason that a reasonable gun toting police offer might have to
fire after a confrontation. To me, this sets a pretty clear context.

Let me add some more that came in later paragraphs that helped crystalize my
understanding and leaves me feeling like the article here isn't really as
biased as you are reading it as, though, I am not accusing you of being
biased, or misreading the article. I can't begin to know all the things that
contribute to your thinking, and vice-versa!

3\. no-knock warrant

While this all sounded like a completely legal entry, and a normal police
procedure, here are my personal "let me add some context to how I interpret
this" thoughts.

\- If I were a POC (I'm not), multiple plain-clothed white men with guns just
stormed into my apartment. This is immediately tense. Imagine how you would
react. What's going through your mind as a civilian? Keep in mind, police
should be trained to do a no-knock warrant. They should be experienced and
cool as a cucumber. I want this in our operators who go into dangerous
situations, in fact, I expect it. You can train for danger. There is no excuse
for imprecision when you are dealing with life and death, especially if, when
doing it, you aren't planning to deal with life or death.

4\. Her home was searched not because of an actual crime she committed, but
because it was a _possible_ drop-off location for a package involved in a
crime.

This feels really weak. Investigate the location then. Stake it out. Find your
target and gather more evidence. This sounds rushed, and desperate. Storming
an intermediate source of evidence rather than waiting for a better
opportunity? Welp, it's not my job so I honestly don't know. I'm not in law
enforcement so opinions are like assholes, right?

So in summary?

I think NYT speaks to a reader who is open-minded and understands that context
is important, and that these subjects are complex. Maybe I'm giving them too
much credit? If someone can walk away from the article with your point of
view, I must be, time to think about that.

If anyone broke down my door, I would attack them. If I had a gun, I would
shoot them, I wouldn't think twice. I sit here, and have no reason to believe
someone should kick in my door unless they mean me harm. Let me grant other
people the same right.

I expect police to be professional. The details on how this went down are not
professional. It think that is safe to say simply because of the outcome.

The police were executing a warrant for a bad person who was not the person
who died. How can we accept that they were in control of the situation, and if
we cannot, or we think they couldn't have been, why would we send people into
such a situation?

I am very flexible when it comes to granting authorities protections and
flexibility in interpreting the law. I actually, for most of my life, have had
faith in the system. I can imagine a scenario where I think many objective
individuals would agree a no-knock warrant would make sense, so I can agree
that they might be useful. I can also agree that ill-equipped people given
tools they don't comprehend, or are not thoughtful enough, or well trained
enough to use, will ultimately abuse and/or misuse them.

~~~
hkai
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.

~~~
magnusss
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 Happened...“ section of the article) indicates
their clear bias.

~~~
codezero
I think this question becomes more complex when it includes "who fired the
first shot when plainclothesed men break down a door into an apartment at
midnight where there is a legal gun-owner"

1\. They should have known a legal gun owner was present. What would anyone
expect a gun-owner to do when their home is broken into? Hasn't Charlton
Heston said something about all this?

2\. They should have been trained and prepared to execute their warrant under
these conditions with a plan for mitigating loss of life, especially since the
suspects in the crime were already arrested, and none were thought to be
present at the address. None of the people at the address were suspected of
criminal activity, and no drugs, or criminal paraphernalia were found. The
stakes of the raid were not justified in my opinion - but I of course, do not
have all the facts, but I feel like I have enough to make these statements.

I absolutely will not accept "who shot first" that's absurd.

~~~
rayiner
To clarify, I’m not denying that the Taylor’s boyfriend had the right to shoot
first. My point is that the NYT _readers_ generally don’t believe in the right
to bear arms, or for armed homeowners to shoot at intruders. If you reject
that premise, it becomes much harder to understand why the police did
something wrong. That’s why the NYT buries that fact instead of reporting it
in the straightforward chronological order.

~~~
codezero
What should the NYT have said, and what forms your opinion of how NYT readers
interpret an article like this? Personally, I don't think I could even get
anecdata on people I know based on their primary news source.

~~~
JamesBarney
> After a brief confrontation, they fired several shots, striking her at least
> eight times.

To

Breonna's boyfriend fearing for his safety fired several shots at the plain-
clothed men who had just broken into his home. These police officers returned
fired, striking Breonna at least eight times.

When most people read "Kenneth got into a brief confrontation with John. John
then fired four rounds at Kenneth." they will assume brief confrontation means
"shouting and cursing match" or "physical altercation" not "fired a gun at".

~~~
codezero
That’s fair. I think there are a lot of ways to interpret how one person or
another can... interpret this... with that said, my stance has been clear on
the balance of power in this kind of situation.

Your home, your legally owned gun, your panic and chaos, you shoot. I would do
the same, I would not be surprised that others did the same.

Expectation of professionalism, and de-escalation is on the regulated
authority with power and accountability. If they were well trained, and made a
calculated risk for an important case, they may be justified. From all that I
can find, it seems clear to me that the police acted unprofessionally, and
anything past that is not really a factor until that unprofessional behavior
is addressed.

------
dmode
Feels like this incident is even more egregious than the George Floyd
incident. In this case the police actually tried to frame the boyfriend, and
probably would have gotten away with murder and convicting an innocent person
if not for national attention

~~~
thephyber
I agree, but video and a simple narrative goes a long way to getting support.

Breonna's case has the following disadvantages: many Americans are willing to
give LEOs benefit of the doubt when there is no video, it's "the word of the
police versus a suspected criminal", the police union's hitpiece[1] in the
media, and the slow wheels of the legal ("justice") system to investigate the
facts which are never fully known in the media within days of an incident.

[1] [https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-
presiden...](https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-president-
disgusted-by-metro-councilwoman-statements-in-breonna-taylor-
case/article_b4f80758-9b84-11ea-86b1-8b4ad95e2ce3.html)

------
Meegul
I recently led the project completely rewriting the incident reporting system
for one of the top 3 (by size) police departments in the country. This report
wouldn't have even come close to passing client-side (or server-side for that
matter) validations upon submission. An incident classified as a death with no
medical information submitted? Usually the systems have some basic checks in
place to ensure that, for example, if a theft occurred, property marked as
stolen is present in the report. Likewise for any incident with some sort of
physical harm: there's always a medical incident listed too. And a (nearly)
blank narrative?! Even if that's due to Louisville PD policy, it still
wouldn't have flown in the city I worked in. A simple assault (not battery, no
injury) on public transit where the offender ran away and nobody could
identify them would've produced a more thorough report than this one.

If this is standard in Louisville and there are no safeguards in their
reporting software, stringent incident reporting software ought to be added to
the list of reforms we ask of them.

~~~
nodox92
The nearly blank narrative is listed under the header “public narrative”. Many
departments use this to separate out the actual narrative from what can be
immediately provided to the public (often just a sentence or two). So, there’s
a possibility the full narrative was withheld as it’s an active investigation.

It’s also not uncommon practice for initial report narratives to be somewhat
anemic when the follow-up investigation is immediate. Homicides being a
perfect example where, in many agencies, all the useful details beyond “found
dead guy” are in the murder book (i.e. case notes) outside of RMS.

------
mjevans
This deserves state and/or federal investigations...

EDIT:

Contrast: In Washington State, an investigation about the death in Tacoma a
couple months ago was just this mentioned in a news conference by the
governor. Due to conflicts of interest the state is currently evaluating who
can be assigned to lead a fully independent and unbiased investigation, with
new announcements expected in the next few days.

~~~
newacct583
The Louisville PD and the FBI have both announced investigations and the
officers involved are on paid leave. Historically, that hasn't generally
produced much in the way of prosecutions. Maybe in the current climate things
will be different.

~~~
mchusma
The concept of paid leave has always puzzled me. This would be my choice of
punishment if I am ever given a choice.

~~~
txcwpalpha
Paid leave isn't meant to be a punishment. There is some expectation that
police officers will inherently be involved in controversial activities that
will require further investigation, some of which may legitimately reveal that
the cop did nothing wrong. Paid leave is supposed to be a compromise to remove
cops from active duty during the investigation (in case they are guilty, we
don't want them still roaming the street potentially doing bad things) but
also not be a punishment (in case they aren't guilty).

The problem is that said investigations always seem to drag their feet, never
going further than the paid leave, and never seem to actually get to the
things that _are_ meant to be a punishment (firing, arrest, etc).

~~~
ciceryadam
Arrest should be made nevertheless, on the grounds of possible witness
intimidation. I'm not saying that they do it all the time, but the power
dynamics allow it to happen, so the best approach for a crystal clear
investigation is to have the officers removed from the community that is
investigating them.

------
x86_64Ubuntu
I find it very telling about the state of policing in the US when the law
enforcement community knows they have the world's eyes on them, and they have
the audacity to put that someone who was killed had 0 injuries. It doesn't
help that the cops had the wrong address, and the person they were looking for
was already in custody.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Or the fact that they were serving a no-knock warrant. The only reason for a
no-knock warrant is to prevent destruction of evidence, which means,
practically, flushing drugs down the toilet. Well, if this kind of situation
is the result of no-knock raids in society, I'm fine with missing some
convictions because drugs got flushed. No-knock raids shouldn't exist. Neither
should the "war on drugs."

In this case, they were supposedly looking for a person. They would have
surrounded the place. It's not like he could have vanished into thin air
between the time they knocked and then had to force their way in. No-knock
raids should never be used for arrest warrants anyway! It's insane to think
that supposedly responsible, intelligent representatives in our government
have led us to the legal situation under which this occurred in the first
place.

~~~
trfhuhg
It wasn't a no knock warrant, though. They said they announced themselves.
They obviously lied, but this lie exposed the truth that the raid was their
own initiative for their own reasons. The lame warrant story is likely meant
to hide the more nefarious truth that there are rogue cops roaming around and
raiding random apartments as they see fit. Basically, police no longer needs
to consult with courts.

------
user982
_" Louisville public agencies [refused] to release records underlying the
Taylor case, including the incident report, 911 calls made in the incident and
Taylor's autopsy report.

"The city has since released Walker's 911 call — but only after an attorney
for Taylor's family gave it to news media hours earlier."_

That 911 call can be heard here:
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonn...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonna-
taylor-shooting-911-call-details-aftermath-police-raid/5278227002/)

------
JohnTHaller
Injuries: none

Forced Entry: no

~~~
sdenton4
And this is what will be recorded in the official statistics about police use
of force. Wonder what else isn't in there?

------
yellowapple
Scribd link to the report (as much as I hate Scribd, I haven't found a better
direct source): [https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-
Inc...](https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-
Report#fullscreen&from_embed)

Some "amusing" notes (and by "amusing" I mean "horrifying" and/or "the
entirety of the LMPD should be fired and prohibited from ever working for a
law enforcement agency again"):

\- "Forced Entry: N" (today I learned breaking down a door and shooting people
is somehow not "forced entry")

\- "Bias Motivation: None (No Bias)" ( _cough cough_ bullshit _cough cough_ )

\- "Public Narrative: PIU Investigation" (wow, real descriptive there)

Can't really comment on much else given that it's entirely devoid of
information.

------
TomK32
What happened to "THIS IS THE POLICE, OPEN UP" along with banging the door?

The only situation where I understand a no-knock warrant is like when the
police is actually targeting someone's computer and don't want to go through
all the hustle of cracking the password.

~~~
jobigoud
But they were in plain clothes anyway. Any gangster could knock and announce
themselves as being the police.

~~~
dillonmckay
At least the gangsters would announce themselves, on your scenario.

~~~
tripzilch
So you could tell if they're police by the fact that they didn't knock.
Brilliant! :-)

------
jefftk
Incident report: [https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-
Inc...](https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-
Report)

------
renegading
The body camera footage has not been released by the police that killed Duncan
Lemp.

------
bregma
The highest authority in the country directed police to dominate the public.
This is how they dominate the public: fear, intimidation, the deployment of
chemical weapons and physical violence against crowds, the 3 AM knock on the
door. Next come the targeted killings, roving death squads, and the mothers of
the disappeared protesting in public squares. It's alomost like an
international standard being followed to the letter. Will no one rid us of the
meddlesome priest?

The poor police were just following orders.

~~~
082349872349872
Still hoping I won't have to reevaluate my amateur Brandenberg analysis:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349804)
(the US military is now even less of a concern, but I'd forgotten about all
the other groups in-country, awash in small arms and light weapons)

------
swrobel
Why is it acceptable to edit the headlines on HN, especially to something
nonsensical like this?

Original: Louisville police release the Breonna Taylor incident report. It's
nearly blank

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

------
lgleason
what does this have to do about tech?

------
ifPossible
I don't want to be charitable to the police, but this situation is a strange
one.

If they were trying to bust a drug smuggling ring, it sounds like maybe there
was parallel construction afoot. In other words, they may have been acting
according to a supply of information beyond that which would ever be presented
to the public, and could not be used to support a prosecution.

Reading between the lines, there's a hint that her role as an EMT put her in
contact with pharmaceuticals that could be siphoned from channels of legal
medical authority, as she was an insider. That, as an insider, she may have
been a sacrifice by illegal operators, or that parallel construction would be
the only way to parry criminals that could have access to insider tip offs
that allow them to perpetually dodge getting caught.

This raises the spectre whereby, maybe there's more than one layer of
misdirection, so where do you draw the line? How would you know whether the
murder itself wasn't an internal turf war among rival corrupt operators using
the aegis of authority?

If she was a medical operator, acting as a relay runner from an official
position of trust, for a smuggling ring, we'll never know.

But the one other angle that bothers me is: maybe they were digital patsies.
If the police used digital/mobile device sources of intel to determine that
these were crooked operators, would they know or care if these were just
regular people who had their devices targeted for squatting in caches and
slack space, and remote relay/exit operations? Would it be believable that a
sophisticated matador practice could be employed as warning canary devices, so
the real operators could throw a kill switch, if their canary croaks?

Hard to say...

The police would use a no-knock warrant if they were corrupt. Or if they
thought they had the real target. But they could be made to believe a false
target is authentic. I don't think we have dirty cops operating a no-knock
death squad. Which means they probably believed they were taking down a
legitimate suspect.

That only leaves open 2 possibilities by my count: She and her associates had
compromised devices and were being used as canaries by real criminals, or they
were the criminals.

The one probable vindicator is if knocking her link from the chain of
smuggling relays should have an outwardly observable effect on some unknown
portion of the black market. If a drought is induced, could it be that her
death disrupted the distribution of drugs? Probably not a crime punishable by
death, but this would point to a rational reason to have been seeking her
arrest.

Meanwhile, there's probably enough noise introduced by pandemic lockdowns, and
the notoriety of the press and media attention, that these other circumstances
could play an outsized role in causing a drought in black market drug
availability on their own.

Furthermore, in some cases, drug gangs are so powerful that one cannot
discount the idea that any such gang that might operate canaries might also
retain muckraking journalists with bribes, who might even work for payment in
access to drugs. At that level of paranoia, you have to believe this may even
be full spectrum warfare, involving very powerful transnational entities, and
that this is akin to covert warfare.

~~~
jonwithoutanh
fucking racist.

------
alkibiades
and not a single shred of evidence it was racially motivated rather than an
accident having to do with the fact that her boyfriend shot a police officer

~~~
bilbo0s
Just, Devil's Advocate, but do you think the accident could have been the
police kicking in the door of the wrong apartment? The boyfriend shooting at
the police does not seem accidental, nor does it seem in any way wrong to my
mind. If the officers had kicked in the door of the right apartment, the
boyfriend would not have tried to take the officers out. Again, a completely
appropriate and well reasoned response in my own opinion.

If you enter private property forcibly, you should expect to be shot at. If
you shoot back while having forcibly gained illegal entry to private property,
you've committed a crime. It seems fairly open and shut to me. The only hold
up is police and court system corruption along with a healthy dose of good old
fashioned racism. Again, just my opinion.

~~~
alkibiades
i agree with what you said. the entire ordeal was an accident on both sides
but my question remained. is there a shred of evidence it was racially
motivated since it’s getting lumped in with BLM

~~~
bilbo0s
That's not what I said. The responsibility for the entire ordeal falls
squarely, and solely, on the police. It was not "on both sides". It is not an
accident, nor in any way inappropriate, for a man to defend his woman from
illegal armed intruders. So the boyfriend made no mistakes at all, and
committed no crimes.

You seem to be attempting to put forth a narrative that the boyfriend somehow
made a mistake. Probably in some misguided attempt to support the police in
this incident. But you're not helping the cause of LEO's right now. You're
actually doing enormous harm to it. When you make mistakes you admit it, you
hold people accountable, and then you fix the issues that lead to the mistake.
That inspires confidence. The response of you and the Louisville PD and court
system inspires not only lack of trust and lack of confidence, but also
widespread animosity.

------
nodox92
This is sensationalist nonsense.

The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the full
narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open
records. It looks like they only got the public narrative [1] which simply
states “PIU Investigation” and are pretending to be shocked. In any case, you
would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not
the initial incident report narrative.

The forced entry checkbox and injuries only have meaning in the context of an
offense and “Death Investigation” isn’t a reportable offense or incident, it’s
just a placeholder. When they have a finding (justifiable or criminal
homicide) then they’ll either complete a supplement or generate a new incident
which will need to have certain flags and drop-down options set correctly for
reporting.

That any of this is being used as some sort of evidence of a cover-up is
ridiculous.

[1] [https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-
Inc...](https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Incident-
Report)

~~~
kerkeslager
> The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the
> full narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open
> records.

It's not "the narrative", it's the incident report.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you are correct that they
aren't obligated to release the incident report. But they _did_ release the
incident report, presumably as a pretense of transparency and/or good will.
The fact that it is basically blank shows that the pretense is just that, a
pretense.

> In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or
> the case file, not the initial incident report narrative.

I would expect the incident report to report the incident. This isn't
confusing.

Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report with
the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see it
eventually!" But that's no less damning: why is there a report with lies on
it, and why is the report with the lies on it the only one the public gets to
see?

If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or
not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there,
but that's a huge problem.

~~~
nodox92
> But they did release the incident report, presumably as a pretense of
> transparency and/or good will.

No argument here; either release useful information or don’t.

> Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report
> with the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see
> it eventually!"

Forced Entry doesn’t mean what people think it means and is probably correct
on the report. As for selecting ‘None’ for injuries on the victim of a
homicide, it sounds like the program that prints the report did that on its
own (obviously needs to be fixed as computers shouldn’t be adding words to
official reports). I don’t think it’s fair to call these things “lies” or use
them as the basis for conspiracy theories as others here have.

> If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or
> not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there,
> but that's a huge problem.

I would argue that restricting public access to complete police reports
related to active investigations is both a norm and serves a legitimate state
interest (protects the integrity of investigations). I would also argue that
once the case is indicted/closed, it should be made available to the public
for inspection.

