Wanton Endangerment

When Louisville called for a curfew and started to prepare for protests, it was pretty clear that there was an understanding that the decision reached by the grand jury regarding indictment of one of the officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor for charges not related directly to her slaying would be, to put it simply, inadequate.

The system in Louisville was ready to prepare for protests, but it is questionable whether the case was fully pursued in establishing how procedure so completely broke down that a young woman was shot dead in her own bed. Managing protests, and finding them more agreeable than performing the basic duty of the full pursuit of justice is a form of wanton endangerment because of the harm it does to the justice system itself by rendering it less credible and more broken with every failure and needless loss of life. And it harms the public by allowing such failures to continue.

Governor Beshear has called for AG Cameron to release an accounting of the evidence so that the public can know for themselves whether this seems just. I'm hung up on that--there are reasons we try people for indictment in grand jury courts, not in public, but knowing what Cameron's office had to work with and how they did it would be instructive, because it is quite possible that a certain minimal result was desired, and certainly a minimal result was obtained. There are valid reasons why prosecutors might take on no more case than they think they can try and win, but here, I just can't help but think there is something incredibly wrong with a result that has people beset upon in their home, possibly not even hearing or being cognizant of any announcement that these were law enforcement, and not being protected by the law.

I highly question the use of a no-knock warrant in the first place, because it seems to me that this would have been better handled in broad daylight. I question how clearly law enforcement announced themselves, and whether the barrage of bullets in response to a shot fired by her partner, Kenneth Walker, was even at that point a reasonable level of force. And I always wonder why, after this kind of force is applied by police, the call for medical assistance never comes quick enough.

I don't know everything, but I know that when people have been marching for justice on behalf of black lives for the past six months looking for some sign that it is understood that they do matter, this doesn't feel like it. And I deeply sympathize with people who feel that results like this mean they too, are just endangered by a system that isn't here to serve and protect them, but operates on the basis of political will and racial bias. Wantonly.

A wanton system is not law and order. A system that assumes people are innocent until proven guilty, and does not treat people as a suspect class because of biased reasoning is the fulfilment of our constitution, it's what all Americans should be entitled to, and it isn't exactly what we have right now. But we should aspire to that, because without it, we do not have peace. We have a breach of faith.

And no, the protesters did not start that. They protest because they want that faith restored, and because they believe justice is a thing that can be achieved. They want faith in a system that has not protected them, and they want it from a system where rubber bullets and tear gas can be fired at them. They love the America they want to believe in and see someday, and keep getting this bullshit. But they still want this American experiment to work.

(And the only price we'd all pay is we get accountable government, which actually is not a price so much as something we all should want anyway.)

They are better institutionalists and patriots than a lot of flag-kissing gun-toters out there could ever hope to be.