Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, says Kentucky’s attorney general failed her daughter in his weak pursuit for justice.
“I never had faith in Daniel Cameron to begin with,” Palmer said, via a statement read aloud by her sister, Bianca Austin, during a news conference Friday. “I was reassured Wednesday of why I have no faith in the legal system, in the police, in the law,” Palmer said in the statement. “They are not made to protect us Black and brown people.”
The news conference was held at Louisville’s Jefferson Square Park.
On Wednesday, a Kentucky grand jury had declined to charge three Louisville police officers over Taylor’s death directly.
“When I speak on it, I’m considered an angry Black woman,” Palmer’s statement continued. “But know this: I am an angry Black woman. I am not angry for the reasons that you would like me to be — but angry because our Black women keep dying at the hands of police officers. And Black men.”
Police executed a “no-knock” search warrant as part of a more extensive narcotics investigation, looking for drugs and cash that they suspected Taylor was holding for an ex-boyfriend. Taylor’s ex later confirmed that Taylor had nothing to do with any of his alleged criminal activities. He even claimed that he was offered a plea deal if he implicated the slain EMT.
“What I had hoped is that he knew he had the power to do the right thing, that he had the power to start the healing of this city, that he had the power to help mend over 400 years of oppression,” Austin went on. “What he helped me realize is that it will always be us against them, that we are never safe when it comes to them.”
