Breonna Taylor: Victim of the Drug War

These past few weeks, as the world has protested the death of George Floyd, many are also raising the name of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Louisville Police on March 13th. The police were looking for a suspect who was wanted for selling drugs and ended up targeting an apartment that they said was being used by the suspect to receive packages. They used a battering ram to forcibly enter the apartment and shot Breonna nearly eight times while she was in bed. To date, no one has been charged with her murder—but Louisville police are reopening the investigation after a public outcry.

Over the last few years, in light of the opioid crisis, there has been plenty of talk about what needs to be done to end the drug war. We've seen expansions of syringe exchanges, harm reduction programs, and methadone/buprenorphine treatment. While no jurisdiction has completely decriminalized drugs, some are opting to direct people who use drugs to alternatives to incarceration (these, however, pose their own issues).

However, the use of SWAT teams to exercise drug warrants has not been significantly addressed. These "no-knock warrants" which allow police to give no prior warning before entering a home, have skyrocketed over the last 40 years—from only 3,000 warrants being executed in 1981 to 50,000 in 2005. In 2014, a baby was badly burned when police in Georgia executed a warrant in search of a suspect who sold informants $50 worth of meth hours earlier. A flash-bang grenade landed in the child's playpen, incinerating it.

While we have made some progress in humanizing people who use drugs (in part due to the perception of the whiteness of opioid users), we still criminalize and demonize those who sell drugs. Legislation, for instance, has been passed over the years that charges dealers with murder if their customers die from an overdose. No-knock raids predominately target those who are selling drugs, or properties where drugs are thought to be stored—and it can have fatal and tragic consequences.

In my view, it is not sufficient to merely pass reforms. In addition to demilitarizing the police so that people are not treated like enemy combatants, I argue that we need a complete decriminalization of drugs—which includes no longer prosecuting the selling of drugs.

Breonna Taylor—a Black woman, and an EMT on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis—was a victim of the drug war. Today happens to be Breonna's birthday.