A photo of Breonna Taylor during a march in defense of black women on Black Lives Matter Square in Washington, United States, July 30, 2022. LEIGH VOGEL / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP
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A former American police officer from Kentucky was convicted on Friday, November 1 by federal courts for his role in the death of Breonna Taylor, a young black woman who became an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement.
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A jury in Louisville, Kentucky's largest city, found Brett Hankison guilty of violating Breonna Taylor's civil rights, and he will be sentenced next March.
His acquittal by local justice in 2022, not for his death but for related facts, had revived the feeling of injustice in anti-racist circles and within the black community of the city.
Convicted of having “endangered” the neighbor
In March 2020, three Louisville police officers broke into the home of Breonna Taylor, 26, in the middle of the night as part of an investigation into drug trafficking targeting her former boyfriend.
His new companion believed they were burglars and fired a shot from a legally owned weapon. The police returned fire and Breonna Taylor was shot several times.
Her death had not attracted much attention until the death of African-American George Floyd, suffocated by a white police officer in May 2020. The young woman's name was then chanted in all the anti-racist demonstrations in summer.
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Despite the anger, local prosecutors had in September 2020 charged only one police officer, Brett Hankison – the one convicted Friday – not for the death of Breonna Taylor but for having « miss a danger » his neighbor by discharging his weapon through a partition. Louisville then went up in flames.
In Louisville, “aggressive police practices”
After Brett Hankison's conviction on Friday, two other police officers remain charged by federal justice.
The Louisville police repeatedly resort to excessive use of force and other illegal, discriminatory, even racist practices, a resounding federal investigation concluded in March 2023.
The Ministry of Justice denounced “aggressive police practices”, “implemented selectively, particularly against black people”.
By Le Nouvel Obs with AFP
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