Their voices echoed in downtown Louisville for more than a year as they demanded accountability for the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor. They rallied in Jefferson Square Park, marched through the streets and sometimes clashed with officers.
Now, as a former officer involved in Taylor’s killing faces trial, those protesters say their interest in the case is slim. “There has not been justice for Breonna Taylor,” said Cara Tobe, a member of the 490 Project, which seeks to combat police brutality in Louisville. “And this is not going to provide that justice.”
Jury selection will begin next week in the trial of Brett Hankison, who was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department for “wantonly and blindly” firing 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment during a drug raid. (No drugs were found in Taylor’s apartment.) Police officials also accused Hankison of shooting into a neighboring apartment. He is on trial for endangering the lives of the three people in that unit at the time.
So far, no one has been charged in the killing of Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, R, has said there is no conclusive evidence that any of Hankison’s bullets struck her.
Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said the three felony counts of wanton endangerment against Hankison should be the lowest charges among many in the case.
“The trial of Brett Hankison recalls the inconceivable lack of justice for Breonna Taylor,” he said in a statement. “It is hard to comprehend that this is the only criminal trial to emerge from the botched no-knock raid that took her innocent life and subsequently shook the nation.”
In the absence of criminal accountability for Taylor’s death, activists have turned their focus to other efforts to reform Louisville policing. They are talking with federal investigators investigating the department, advocating for changes to police union contracts and trying to hold leaders accountable to their proposed changes – all as Louisville, like many cities nationwide, tries to stem a surge of gun violence.
Chanelle Helm, an organizer for Black Lives Matter Louisville, said if Hankison is convicted, it would send the message that citizens believe the city’s policing is broken. But she is more focused on advocating for more public input in the police department’s hires and disciplinary procedures.
Helm said she is cautiously optimistic that a sweeping investigation of the police force by the Justice Department will identify significant systemic issues. The “pattern or practice” probe, announced in April, is examining whether the department has engaged in systemic abuses.
“If we do see the DOJ actually pull it out for the things that community folks who have been systemically abused by law enforcement and tortured by law enforcement here have been calling for, then that would be phenomenal to me,” she said. “I absolutely am watchful.”
Activists are also awaiting the results of a nearly two-year FBI probe of potential civil rights violations in Taylor’s killing. Sara Anderson, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Louisville office, said the agency will announce the investigation’s conclusion, regardless of whether it pursues any prosecutions.
Tyra Thomas-Walker said Hankison’s state-level trial was so far from her mind that she didn’t realize it was starting until a reporter asked about it. The fact that the alleged victims are White makes it feel even less relevant to attempts to change officers’ interactions with Black Americans, said Thomas-Walker, co-chair of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
“From my perspective, it means nothing,” she said. “Because he’s not going to trial for the murder of Breonna Taylor.”
The family in the neighboring apartment – Chelsey Napper, Cody Etherton and their son – have largely avoided public attention since the raid. In an ongoing federal lawsuit, they allege that the city failed to properly train and supervise the officers who executed the early-morning search warrant.
Several activists said they empathized with the couple and viewed the trial as a chance for accountability for a small portion of the raid’s harm.
“I feel bad for the family that it happened and caused emotional distress and pain,” said Lavel White, a longtime activist and former community outreach coordinator for the city. “They weren’t injured, though.”
With one eye on the trial, community members said they are also continuing to watch Louisville Metro Police Chief Erika Shields, who took the department’s helm in January 2021 vowing to establish trust between community members and the officers sworn to protect them.
Over the past year, Shields has welcomed federal investigators, sent department leadership on patrol shifts and sought to extend empathy to officers she says are traumatized from the tumultuous demonstrations of 2020. Mayor Greg Fischer, D, has proposed bolstering the department through a $35 million plan to establish a police accountability bureau and hire more internal auditors, among other steps.
But many community members remain wary or uncertain about whether those efforts will help. While officers seem to be interacting with the public more often, White said some residents worry that police are not doing enough to protect their families from the spike in violence. The city logged more than a dozen homicides in January.
Tobe said she found much of Shields’s response to this violence “troubling,” especially her department’s reliance on the gunfire locator service ShotSpotter and the use of geofence warrants to collect cellular data in investigations. Those tactics, Tobe said, amount to the over-surveillance of community members.
“She has made changes,” Tobe said of Shields. “I’m not sure that that will necessarily end up in actual changes for the better of our community.”
In response, the police department said it objected to “politically charged comments” suggesting that officers lean heavily on ShotSpotter and geofence warrants to curb crime.
“This is factually inaccurate and perpetuates a narrative that policing is narrowly focused when in actuality it relies heavily on multiple investigative efforts,” the department said in a statement. “LMPD is acutely aware that its responsibility to the community extends well beyond data and arrests.”
In the fall, members of Tobe’s organization were among residents who pushed for changes to the contracts the city reached with its police unions. They praised some revisions from previous years, including requiring citizen complaints to be retained and prohibiting officers from reviewing body-camera footage before being interviewed by investigators.
But they said the updates did not go far enough and were critical of a provision that gives officers a 9% raise for last year, followed by another 6% increase. When the next round of contract negotiations begins later this year, activists said they hope community members can observe.
As that advocacy continues, Louisville activists remain attuned to the absence of the accountability for Taylor’s death that they most wanted. Three officers involved in the case were fired, and one agreed to resign. The city reached a $12 million settlement with Taylor’s family and banned no-knock warrants like the one authorized for Taylor’s apartment – although witnesses agree that officers did knock before entering.
“There is no justice going to be had right now,” White said. “In the eyes of public opinion, the fight still goes on.”
The Washington Post