The Breonna Taylor Investigation Is Over. Now What?

Last week, the city and the world got the long-awaited answer on what specific criminal consequences, if any, would happen to the police involved in the death of Breonna Taylor. The results of last week’s grand jury proceeding led only to the indictment of former Louisville Metro Police detective Brett Hankison on several charges of wanton endangerment, for bullets that traveled into a neighbor’s apartment. Neither of the other two police officers involved in the shooting, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, were indicted. Since Hankison was already fired from the force, that left no one in LMDP criminally indicted in Taylor’s death. With the outcome leaving as many questions as before, rather than bringing finality, we talk this week about the issues left to grapple with, like the psychological impact on Louisville’s black community and how this connects to the future of criminal justice reform. We also check in with NPR’s Brakkton Booker about how the Taylor case compares on a national level to other notable cases involving the police killings in the Black community, and how protests in other places have continued on while we were focused on our own. And we hear from U.S. Representative for Kentucky John Yarmuth, who has recently criticized the Louisville Metro Police Department, including its handling of the Taylor case.