Months after a national spark of protests and activism, the Kentucky Grand Jury indicted one of three officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor. 

Brett Hankinson was indicted and charged with three counts of wanton endangerment over the bullets strewn in the apartment building. His bond is set at $15,000. He has already been released from jail. 

The other two officers,  Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrovem had no charges against them. None of the officers were directly charged with the death of Breonna Taylor, even after the city of Louisville reached a settlement of $12 million based on wrongful death on Sept. 15. 

The decision came six months after a botched narcotics raid that took the life of Taylor, a 26-year old EMT. She was asleep in her bed when the Louisville police attempted to execute a no-knock warrant. Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, mistook the police for an intruder and opened fire, the police returned a warning shot, which struck Mattingly. The officers then fired their weapons again and killed Taylor in the crossfire. Over 32 bullets were fired into the apartment. 

The raid was intended for Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. Glover was wanted by the Louisville police for several drug-related charges. He was found and arrested 30 minutes before the raid that took Taylor’s life. 

Leilany Rodriguez, a legal studies major, spent her summer advocating for not only Breonna Taylor, but all people who have had their life taken unjustly by the police. 

“The system finds a way to justify it… my community is trying to just be good citizens. We are trying to survive and it’s still not good enough.”

The ruling had a personal effect on Rodriguez. A person of color, living in New York, it could have easily been her. She feels rage at the system for constantly finding loopholes in the legal process. 

“How can you charge him (Hankinson) with the bullets that missed her (Taylor)? If they wanted to indict him, they would have. Property shouldn’t be more important than life.” 

Critics believe that there are many holes in this case that have been heavily criticized by the public. In the official FBI incident report, virtually half of the document were left blank. Under the injuries column, the report marked “no,” despite the eight gunshot wounds to Taylor. Under the forced entry column, the report marked “no,” despite neighbors’ claims and photos of brute force at the entry. The four-page report only includes the time, date, case number, victim name, and names of officers involved, according to CBS News. 

Jadiah Terrance, another legal studies major, hopes to get involved with the systemic racism and put an end to the injustice that took Taylor’s life. 

“I am Breonna Taylor. I am Ahmed (Arbery) and George Floyd. These people are me and look like me. It could have been my brother or my mother who lost their life.” 

Breonna Taylor is one of the cases that has reached national media attention in the last year along with Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Daniel Prude. An outburst of protests occurred beginning in May and are still carrying on. On June 6, the peak of Black Lives Matter protests brought out over half a million people in one day. One poll released by Civis Analytics proved that anywhere from 15-26 million people participated in protests whether it was a physical rally or boycotting products, June alone. 

The outrage about Taylor also brought more attention to the #SayHerName campaign. The campaign aims to bring “awareness to the often invisible names and stories of black women and girls who have been victimized by racist police violence, and provides support to their families.”

The website goes on to say, “black women and girls as young as 7 and as old as 93 have been killed by the police, though we rarely hear their names. Knowing their names is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for lifting up their stories which in turn provides a much clearer view of the wide-ranging circumstances that make black women’s bodies disproportionately subject to police violence. To lift up their stories, and illuminate police violence against black women, we need to know who they are, how they lived, and why they suffered at the hands of police.” 

This campaign was founded in 2014 and has helped hundreds of families cope and raise awareness to the violence against black women. At the beginning of the 2020 WNBA season, New York Liberty guards Layshia Clarendon and Seattle Storm forward Breanna Stewart made a speech together about the season-long commitment to social injustice. The entire WNBA league teamed up with the #SayHerName campaign and put the title on the back of every jersey. Each week of the entire season, the league has chosen a black woman who was a victim of police violence to tell their story. 

Terrance, who knows many people who have been the victim of police brutality, hopes to use her platform and future career to save the lives of Black and people of color after she graduates. She let her voice be heard by protesting in the city all summer and spreading awareness to family and friends.