Beyoncé writes open letter asking Kentucky attorney general for justice in murder of Breonna Taylor

By Sam Barsanti | June 15, 2020 | 10:22pm

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Beyoncé writes open letter asking Kentucky attorney general for justice in murder of Breonna Taylor

Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer

As reported by CNN, Beyonce’s has shared an open letter addressed to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron asking for justice in the murder of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot at least eight times in her home by three plainclothes police officers without body cameras who were serving a “no-knock” warrant (meaning they did not have to announce themselves or why they were there) back in March. The police were there as part of a narcotics investigation, but as later revealed in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Taylor’s mother, the suspect that the police had been looking for had already been arrested at another location by the time Taylor was killed. The three officers (Jon Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, and Brett Hankison) have not been charged with anything, and the incident report released by the Louisville police department was almost entirely blank—right down to the injuries of the woman who was shot eight times by the police being listed as “none.”

Beyonce’s letter suggests that the official investigations have “created more questions than answers” and asks Cameron—who, CNN points out, is a Republican—to bring criminal charges against the officers and to conduct a transparent investigation into what happened here and what causes the “pervasive practices that result in the repeated deaths of unarmed Black citizens.” She also ends her letter by saying that “there are two real tragedies” whenever a Black person is killed by the police: “The death itself and the inaction and delays that follow it.”