Lone Black Female Kentucky Lawmaker Arrested At Breonna Taylor Protest
Kentucky Rep. Attica Scott (D), the state’s only Black female lawmaker, was arrested and charged with a felony rioting charge Thursday (September 24) after a grand jury failed to indict three officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s fatal shooting.
Scott, who in August proposed a measure to end no-knock warrants statewide, was arrested by police in Louisville, Ky., police and charged with first-degree rioting and two misdemeanors for failure to disperse and unlawful assembly, The Washington Post reports. She was released Friday.
Protests erupted Wednesday after a grand jury in Jefferson County, Ky., failed to indict
three officers in Taylor’s fatal shooting at her home in March. Instead, Brett Hankison, a former Louisville police detective who was fired in June, was indicted on three charges of wanton endangerment in the first degree. The ex-detective was charged with endangering the lives of Taylor’s neighbors by firing the rounds, The Post writes.
Scott, a state representative since 2017, has been vocal about calling for police accountability in Kentucky. The measure she introduced in August, known as “Breonna’s Law,” would force police to knock and verbally announce themselves, and would require a judge to approve the use of violent entry when issuing the warrant. Officers would have to activate their body cameras when serving the warrant, the report says. It is unclear if, or when, the Kentucky House will vote on the measure.
“Our call to action is to continue to make sure that the city of Louisville understands that we will not go away, that we will continue to demand the defunding of police and the dismantling of this police department because it’s corrupt from the inside out, from the bottom to the top,” Scott told NPR.
