More than four months after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot as she lay sleeping in her own home, Trevor Noah reminded viewers of “The Daily Show” that the white police officers who killed her still walk free.
Thursday’s segment served as a reminder that she was a “person,” not a “slogan or a post on your social media feed,” he said.
“Breonna Taylor was a friend, a daughter, an EMT worker working to help save people’s lives, and apparently one hell of a TikTok dancer,” Noah said, showing a montage of videos from Taylor’s life.
Taylor was 26 when plainclothes Louisville, Kentucky police officers broke into her apartment while executing a “no-knock” warrant in mid-March. When her boyfriend Kenneth Walker responded to the intruders by firing his licensed gun in self-defense, the cops fired back, shooting Taylor at least eight times.
Despite the fact that police entered the property using a battering ram, a mostly-blank incident report filed by police listed Taylor’s injuries as “none” and denied that forced entry was used. And according to a lawsuit filed by Taylor’s family, the man who officers were looking for did not even live there ― he was already in custody.
To date, none of the cops involved have been arrested or charged.
“Every step of the way this investigation ran, the police screwed up. They made a million mistakes, which is a million more than any Black person is ever allowed to make,” Noah said. “And honestly, with the amount of mistakes that the police made throughout the entire process, I don’t even know if it’s fair to call them mistakes at this point. Because a mistake is something you do by accident. But these cops blatantly ignored so many protocols and so much information, at some point, it moves from a mistake to just actively not giving a fuck.”
Watch as Noah examines Taylor’s life, death and the urgent need for justice: