Tamika Palmer is not giving up her fight for her daughter, Breonna Taylor.
24 hours after a grand jury announced that none of the three officers involved in Taylor's death would be charged with her killing, Palmer took to Instagram to share a short statement. "It's still Breonna Taylor for me," she captioned a portrait of her late daughter. Palmer also added 2 blue heart emojis, a red broken heart emoji and the hashtag "#ThesystemfailedBreonna."
The grand jury's decision to indict only one of the three officers involved in the shooting, former Det. Brett Hankison, on first-degree wanton endangerment charges on Wednesday (September 23) came more than six months after Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician and aspiring nurse, was shot to death by Louisville police officers, who broke down the door to her apartment while executing a "no-knock" warrant on March 13. The charges have been highly criticized by many as they apply to the risk put on Taylor's white neighbor, who had bullets from the police shootout hit their wall.
"Today's decision was an additional injustice on our family and this country. Until Americans start getting mad enough and speaking out and forcing legislators to change the laws for all races, nothing is going to change. And it needs to happen now. Not tomorrow, but today," Taylor's cousin, Tawanna Gordon, said in a statement immediately after the grand jury announcement.
Taylor's family attorney, Ben Crump, also spoke out, saying, "How ironic and typical that the only charges brought in this case were for shots fired into the apartment of a white neighbor, while not charges were brought for the shots fired into the Black neighbor's apartment or into Breonna's residence."
On Thursday (September 24), Crump additionally told Anderson Cooper, "We do believe it was a coverup from go. They always intended to sweep this under the rug as if Breonna Taylor's life didn't matter." He cited the fact that the three-page police report that said there were no signs of forced entry was filled with lies, CNN reports. They had the audacity to say there were no injuries, yet Breonna was executed there in the hallway of her apartment," Crump added.
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