Breonna

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Injuries: None

Forced Entry: No

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A black woman was murdered by a team of police officers in Louisville, KY while she was asleep over 90 days ago. What you have just read is the sum of the police report filed by the precinct after that incident. 

We now know that, according to Breonna’s mother, the boyfriend called her at some point during or after the ordeal, afraid to tell her Breonna was dead while the apartment was hit with a hail of bullets by unannounced officers trying to serve a search warrant, not realizing they were in the wrong apartment. Her mom rushed to the apartment complex in the middle of the night and recalls she was sent to the hospital by an officer on the scene telling her that “the ambulance with the girl” was already on its way. 

She waited… 2 hours… to be told that there was no record of anybody by that name at said hospital. When she returned and was able to speak to a detective who, after waiting a few more hours, asked her if Breonna had any enemies, or if she and her boyfriend did drugs, or were having any relationship problems – ya know, typical “black issues” that could later become an alibi for the police. They. Tried. To frame. A sleeping. Woman. For her own. Death. 

Sidebar: The past couple of months have caused me to personally reassess several areas of my life and the world around me. Where do I go from here and how do I address this “new normal” during a worldwide pandemic that is snatching the lives of black and brown people at astonishing rates because research is never done on how pain and diseases affect OUR bodies. While the higher-profile deaths of more black men AND women at the hands of officers, and those pretending to be law enforcement have made me feel inept in other ways. The perceived value and worth of a black body in 2020 seems to be less than the ⅗ of a human being that we were once offered. I was feeling like I needed to crawl deeper into my safe space in order to preserve my own existence. And then a friend, a black man in my community offered these words of unsolicited encouragement that became the elevator and awakening that I didn’t know I needed to hear: “thank you to you, and all women of color, who have always taken on the black man’s issues without even batting an eye. And we as black men haven’t always been there to protect you and say thank you. So for all men let me say thank you. You and the rest of black women don’t have to do what you do.” This diatribe, this tribute, though mere words over a quarantined distance, is what all black women need to hear from black men daily- if not several times a day- to begin filling the ditches dug in our souls. Beginning with the watery graves of the revolting slaves, who preferred to jump to their deaths in the Atlantic Ocean rather than be a slave in the new world. 

As we stand at the time of this article being published, the officers have yet to be arrested or held accountable for Breonna Taylor’s death, as if she was just collateral damage on a call-gone-wrong. A bullet hole in a wall, or door broken down, furniture flipped over. As a black woman, I am left literally speechless and in shock. What am I to make of any of this? How can anyone justify an ambush- a murder- in this way? Thank you, king, for delivering a statement that reminds me of my priceless contribution to this earth, because some days I truly wonder… Is it that, in this big, wide world, to some people black women are just…

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