Lay Down with Dogs
Get up with Fleas
Or Not Get up at All
The soft on crime agenda gets lots of attention as it allows people to feel good about their virtue signaling but the devil is in the consequences of allowing criminals to escape justice. The agenda allows politicians to steal more and more tax dollars from the criminal justice system to spend buying votes and after all, when things go South they can always jack up the taxes once again and claim it is for the children.
We have written many stories about the criminal justice system and how the sheer lack of consequences allows criminals to have no cost after being arrested, no bail, no need to hire a lawyer if you are going to do a plea deal anyway, and you won't be required to pay your fees and fines, perhaps twenty to forty bucks a month if they squeeze you.
And the damage that releasing people on their own recognizance, without a bail bondsman keeping up with them, leads to just more crime as they are quickly back out on the street.
Then the liberals running SQ 805, making it impossible to enhance sentences of career criminals no matter how many previous convictions they rack up.
Jamarcus Glover laughs at the system. His life of crime lead to the death of Breonna Taylor thanks to a close relationship between the two. Taylor was the one that usually bonded Glover out of jail, held money for the drug dealer, loaned cars to him, even received packages for Glover long after they were have said to split.
Taylor wasn't an EMT, she was a fired EMT according to released personnel records. She had worked for only five months despite the “highly decorated” status some of the media claims she had. Highly decorated? Since when do they give EMTs awards? She had ran afoul of the city of Louisville around 2016 when a dead body was found in her rented car trunk, an associate of her boyfriend Glover.
The night she was killed Glover was with another boy friend, or a current boyfriend, depending on what source you trust. Kenneth Walker had no felony arrests and seems to be a law abiding dude. But he was well aware of Glover and the relationship with Taylor, to the point that when the cops were banging on the door announcing themselves he and Taylor wondered if it was Glover or a rival drug dealer coming to visit.
Taylor had been named in a search warrant along with Glover and a total of five drug house locations. The relationship with Glover was the reason for the search warrant, and despite court rulings saying otherwise the Louisville PD tended to use boiler plate forms to get their search warrants with the judge not doing his duty to protect the public from wild goose hunts and harassing ex convicts. The warrant had her name on it and her house address so the cops had the legal right to search the home. Glover had two other warrants out for his arrest. Glover himself had been arrested earlier in the five address raid process.
There is no doubt that Glover loved his drugs and loved to sell them even more. Four of the five houses that were raided came up with drugs, cash camera systems, the complete set up for running drugs. Taylor and Walker turned out to be fairly clean, neither had felony arrests. The evidence tying Taylor to Glover was varied, postal inspector info stating that Glover had packages shipped to his ex girlfriend's home. Taylor bailing Glover out of jail mutliple times, jail phone conversations where Glover said tht Taylor was holding thousand of dollars for Glover that was available for bail money. There was even tracking device results and video/photos segments showing Glover visiting Taylor's home frequently.
Taylor herself didn't appear to have a drug problem and no drugs were found in her house. Kenneth Walker, the newest boy friend was fairly clean with no felony arrests.
Glover himself had been arrested on March 13th and quickly set loose on bail. The next day he was arrested again on drug charges, coke, heroin, trafficking weed, tampering with evidence, and complicity in trafficking drugs. It used to be that arrested criminals were in jail for a week or so till bail was arranged, not turned back out before the cop finishes the paperwork on the arrest.
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As for the shooting, our opinion was it was the product of associating with a known drug dealer. Walker seemed to have fired in self defense, claiming not to have heard the cops announcing themselves and had he heard them, with an ex girlfriend of a known drug dealer, would you trust someone banging on your door in the middle of the night? Walker and Taylor had gotten out of bed, Walker grabbed his legal gun, and stood in the hallway. When the door was knocked off its hinges Walker fired one shot toward the door and the cops fired twenty rounds back his way. Walker's shot wounded an officer in the leg, the cop's bullets struck Taylor between 5 and 8 times according to different accounts.
These were plainclothes cops, not the swat team, nor was the raid well planned or supported. The shoddy surveillance hadn't revealed that Walker was living there, they thought Taylor was alone at home. Glover had already been arrested that night but as Taylor was on the search warrant they had every right to search the home.
What is the law on these searches, especially the no knock middle of the night searches?
Wilson v. Arkansas 1995 was the first successful use of the Castle Doctrine in a knock and announce case. SCOTUS found that the cops should knock and announce themselves except for the most extreme cases. The homeowner is to be given the time to answer the door, avoid the violence, and the property damage of a forced entry. There were exceptions, if the cops thought that evidence would be destroyed, or if the suspects might flee or assault the cops. And as would be expected cops quickly learned to exploit this loophole by claiming that all drug raids faced these threats.
In 1997 SCOTUS went further, recognizing the problem they had created. Richards V. Wisconsin stated that blanket exceptions to the Castle Doctrine were unconstitutional. What they now required was that the cops and the judges issuing the search warrants determine if this particular drug dealer justified the exception of the knock and announce requirement. There has to be a reasonable suspicion that it would be dangerous or futile to announce the raid. Reasonable suspicion we talked about last week, that a reasonable lay person would agree, not what a cop thinks because of his experience. You have to document the why's and needs. Anything will do, provide a fig leaf pretty much and you are good.
The affidavit for the search warrant used boiler plate text that was used in all five searches that night. It claimed that the suspects had a history of destroying evidence, that there were cameras, and the suspects had a history of fleeing from police. That might have been true for some of the other known drug houses that were raided; it wasn't true for the Taylor home.
Taylor had a shoplifting charge that had been dismissed in 2012 and that was about it. Walker had no known felony convictions or charges and as he was not expected to be there by the cops his record is irrelevant
One has to wonder why police departments are breaking the law and the answer is that once again SCOTUS screwed the pooch. Hudson V. Michigan in 2006 was a narrowly decided case that allowed evidence seized in an unconstitutional no knock and announce entry to be used as evidence. Normally any illegally seized evidence is stricken from the case if the cops break the law. The opinion stated that excluding the evidence was too extreme, that there were other ways of keeping cops honest. Except that there are not. Qualified immunity makes it nearly impossible to sue a cop. The judges who ought to know better sign these boiler plate search warrants and are not held accountable. Cops that get caught lying on warrants aren't fired.
The whole idea of requiring justification for breaking into a home unanounced was thrown out the window with the Hudson decision. No need to investigate, surveille or triple checking the address. No need to prove that the bad guy was likely to destroy evidence or flee.
The result is that more cops die and more innocent homeowners die. Breonna Taylor died not because her association with a known drug dealer, she died because the Supreme Court prioritized drug prosecutions over the 4th Amendment. She died because her boyfriend was stupid enough to date her after knowing that a drug dealer or one of his competitors might come knocking on the door at 3 am. She died because he fired a shot without knowing what or who he was shooting at.
The bottom line is that everyone involved screwed up in some way. Taylor for dating a drug dealer, Walker for dating the ex girlfriend of a drug dealer, the cops for being lazy and not doing their work properly, the judge for not demanding reasonable suspicion for the search warrant to be a no knock warrant much less conducted at that time of day.
One thing is sure though. Taylor was no angel. Walker had his share of responsibility and so did the cops. Sorting it out is going to take someone smarter than we are I think. A start is to end these late night/early morning raids. Break into the house during the day, no one home to shoot at the cops. Catch the suspect on the way out of the house so there is no question who is wanting in the house. And put body cameras on these search warrant teams and make it a firing offense to tamper with them or turn them off during use.
As for the cops that knocked down the door and shot Taylor, they are no more guilty than the others involved including Taylor. The City already paid $12 million to the Taylor family, that alone ought to have prevented a riot and I suppose that is what they thought they were paying for. If you want a solution stop the no knock raids and train the cops to work harder to catch criminals, as the military says, sweat more now, bleed less later.
