UPDATE: George Floyd and Breonna Taylor Cases
Murder of George Floyd
Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis Police Department officer who killed George Floyd, posted his million dollar bail bond after a judge changed the conditions on the bond. The original conditions of the bail bond said that Chauvin could not leave Minnesota. That condition has been changed to allow him to “live in any of the four bordering states.” It also includes the stipulation that he carry a cell phone with him at all times.
According to Judge Peter Cahill, the changes were made for safety reasons. Mr. Chauvin’s address will not be listed on documents, to protect him. His address will only be given out on a need-to-know basis.
Ben Crump, the attorney for the Floyd family, released the following statement on his Twitter account,
“The fact that Derek Chauvin is being given special treatment out of concern for his safety demonstrates how stark the contrast is between the two justice systems in America. Can you imagine a Black man awaiting trial for murder being allowed to leave the state out of concern for his safety? The police were not concerned about George Floyd’s safety even as he was handcuffed, face down on the ground with his breath and life being slowly extinguished. Yet, the man charged with killing him will roam free across state lines. It’s time to recognize and fix the inherent injustice in our systems.”
Murder of Breonna Taylor
New information has come out regarding the no-knock warrant that was issued for Breonna Taylor’s residence. Officers knew that packages were coming to Breonna Taylor’s house and that those packages were for her ex-boyfriend. They suspected the packages had drugs, but guess what? The Louisville Police Department did the right thing. Sgt. Mattingly, who was one of the officers who shot Breonna Taylor, reached out to postal inspectors. A month before the warrant was requested and approved, Mattingly was informed by the postal inspectors that there was nothing of interest in the packages. The packages were from Amazon and had clothing items and shoes.
Sgt. Mattingly passed on that information to “Joshua Jaynes, the detective who obtained the search warrant.” Regardless of information to the contrary, Joshua Jaynes decided that other packages ‘could’ have drugs in them and requested the search warrant using information that had no factual basis.
According to the Reason.com article,
“There was clearly no probable cause to believe drugs were being dealt from her apartment, and no probable cause that Breonna or her boyfriend [Kenneth Walker] were doing anything illegal,” says Daniel Klein, a former Albuquerque police sergeant who writes about law enforcement issues, in an email. “Yet the assistant district attorney and the [circuit] court judge not only approved the warrant…they approved it to be a no-knock warrant executed in the middle of the night!”