You Can Try To Call This a "Legal System"

As I learned nearly six years ago when a grand jury decided not to indict the officer who killed Michael Brown, our legal system handles killings by police on a case-by-case basis, focusing very narrowly on the moment the officer chose to pull the trigger, use a choke hold, etc., blocking out all the events and decisions leading up to that moment. In that instant, did the officer have reason to believe their life was in danger? Or was their use of deadly force reckless – racist? – malicious? This always seems like the wrong question to me.

Yes, we need to hold individual officers accountable when they have taken someone’s life – when, for example, they gun down an innocent woman in her own bedroom in the middle of the night. But we also have to look beyond that fateful moment and ask bigger questions. How did this horrific, inexcusable thing happen? What can we learn from it, so it doesn’t happen again? (And again, and again...) What are the precise steps that led these officers to bust down Breonna Taylor’s door and get shot at by her partner, who had every reason to believe he was fending off a violent home invasion?

Justice for Breonna Taylor is only partly about what happens to the officers who killed her. It is also about examining and reevaluating the decisions that led up to that moment, the policies that enabled those decisions, the priorities embedded in those policies. Is this kind of midnight raid the only way to acquire evidence in certain criminal investigations? If so, can it be accomplished in a way that doesn’t insanely risk the lives of innocent people (or guilty people, for that matter – or police officers)? If so, can we ensure the crucial safeguards are in place, and always enforced? If not, is the potential for cascading tragedy worth the potential benefits? I think if we stepped back and thought about it, we might decide that the answers are no, no, no, and no.

I’d like to see us keep stepping back, opening up bigger and bigger questions about our policies and priorities, our needs and assumptions and visions and values – preferably in conversation with people who come at policing from many different perspectives. If we keep at it, we might start to reimagine what we want our police departments to look like. We might ask how we could radically transform them. We might ask whether we want them at all.

I don’t pretend to know what the answers to those bigger questions might turn out to be. I am heartened that they have emerged more fully in the years since I made this sign, even as I am discouraged by its enduring relevance. I hope we keep them at the center of our quest for justice for Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and all the others, before, since, and in between.