Sure, Louisville will settle with Breonna Taylor’s family for $12 million — and bury that ugly gentrification story

Using police to Bogart Black folks out of homes for condo projects? Let that play in a courtroom …

There was a moment in early July when I knew there wasn’t going to be a Breonna Taylor civil lawsuit against the City of Louisville over her death by police bullets.

“Hellll-nah. Ain’t gonna happen,” is what I kept saying.

Family lawyers dropped this neutron bomb, ironically, the day after America’s Independence Day: Taylor’s death was the result of a broader police operation designed to ethnically cleanse a specific strip of a Louisville, Kentucky neighborhood so real estate interests can build a seven-figure development — named Vision Russell — that has the support of the city’s Mayor, Greg Fischer.

Not that race-based selective policing is a big surprise — and no, don’t come at me with “because Black people commit more crimes” — cops police Black neighborhoods across the country so hard that I call it a [para]military occupation these days.

Like most outrageous cases of racism, my mouth is open wide shut because officials got caught in the act of being racist to the fringes.

Besides, how many “affordable housing” adventures in Black neighborhoods start with building luxury condos that make all residential and commercial rents blast off? And how many of these fantasy developments don’t result in the displacement of native residents? Please …

Anyway, Louisville doesn’t want this court case. Neither does Mayor Fischer.

The deeds alleged in the Taylor family’s lawsuit, if true, would draw a textbook definition of an organized crime syndicate at work in city government. A Mayor and his enablers want to gentrify people of color and the poor from their homes, and then use the police department as the muscle in this ethnic exodus program.

Please tell me what the mafia looks like if this isn’t among the most gangsta-type stuff a city can do to its citizens.

Mayor Fischer held a rare presser on Breonna Taylor to directly call the  lawyers’ allegation “outrageous”.

And yet, his city is settling with Team Taylor today for $12 million. 

The whole case smells like a city fish market after midnight. There were more officers at the scene of the shooting than the four everyone talks about; no cop seemed to have a body camera working to capture a supposed DRUG raid; the police officers’ primary suspect — Jamarcus Glover —  was arrested earlier that night, before the Taylor raid and shooting; despite Mayor Fischer’s denials, his office has been in contact with the police unit assigned to clear residents from the block marked for Vision Russell; plus the city purchased a police-seized home in the targeted neighborhood for a dollar.

And that’s not even an eighth of the foolishness.

Nope. I didn’t expect the civil case to happen. Hell, I suspect the city isn’t talking about its investigation of Taylor’s death because it first has to figure out how to “reconcile” all the damning evidence so that City Hall officials don’t get led away in handcuffs!

The lawyers’ allegation comes wrapped in receipts. You can find it here and embedded below, thanks to the Courier Journal. Also, check out Vice TV’s investigation of what Taylor’s lawyers have alleged. Vice gets crazy nods from me for being one of the few popular media outlets that took a deep dive into this gangsterism. 

A lawsuit? (Laughing) Nope.

But I think Mayor Fischer should be one of several officials put on trial for turning the city into a banana republic.

And I don’t plan to forget that it’s been six months and two days since no officer has been arrested for the death of Breonna Taylor. We still need police reform. Breonna’s Law would be a start for Kentucky …

song currently stuck in my head: “no problem” – united future organization w/ mark murphy