After one former Minneapolis officer was arrested for the death of George Floyd and three more remain free, Solange has a question for city and state officials. But not the ones in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but those in Louisville, Kentucky, for the way they’re handling Breonna Taylor‘s case.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was an EMT, was shot on March 13 when three plainclothes officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department burst into her apartment on a no-knock search warrant during a drug raid.
Solange blasted Louisville’s mayor and Kentucky’s governor over the death of Breonna Taylor. (Photo: Erika Goldring / FilmMagic via Getty Images Entertainment)
Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were in the home at the time, and Walker shot at the officers as they breached the door, striking one in the leg, He would say later he did not know they were police.
The officers returned fire and struck Taylor eight times. There were no drugs found in the apartment, and Walker was arrested for attempted murder of a police officer. That charge was just dropped by prosecutors late last month.
The officers who stormed into Taylor’s apartment, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, have yet to be charged, and they’ve been placed on administrative leave, which Knowles finds ridiculous. So she called out the city’s mayor and state’s governor, seemingly discounting the fact that decisions about prosecutions would come from the offices of the city district attorney or state attorney general.
“Ayo @louisvillemayor@GovAndyBeshear When the f–k are y’all going to arrest and charge Breonna Taylor’s murderers ?!?” she tweeted on Sunday, May 31, reference Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. “Why are Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankinson & Myles Cosgrove still roaming freely & still being payed while y’all try to protect the blood on y’all’s hands?”
Many agreed with Solange, and some said the Black community doesn’t unite in the same way when a Black woman is killed by an officer compared to when a Black man’s life is taken by one.
“Exactly!! There’s not enough media coverage or outrage over this woman’s case and I’m pissed,” wrote one Twitter user.
“For some reason, the community doesn’t mobilize for Black women. That is a tragedy within a tragedy,” another person commented.
On Sunday, May 31, protesters gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, for the fourth straight night, many protesting the slaying of Breonna Taylor in a repeat of demonstrations community members have undertaken since she was slain. The Kentucky National Guard was eventually called to patrol the streets after there was some violence and property damage.
Later that night, David McAtee, a Black man who owned a popular outside eatery in Louisville, was shot and killed in the early hours of Monday morning after police and the National Guard tried to disperse a crowd and fired shots.
In the aftermath of the McAtee’s slaying, this week Mayor Fischer terminated Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad after it was learned that none of the LMPD officers on the scene of the McAtee shooting had their body cameras activated during the incident. Conrad previously had announced his plans to step down within weeks.
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