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The Killing of Breonna Taylor, Part 1

2020-09-09

At the beginning of 2020, Breonna Taylor posted on social media that it was going to be her year. She was planning a family with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker; she had a new job and a new car. She had also blocked Jamarcus Glover, a convicted drug dealer with whom she had been romantically involved on and off since 2016, from her phone.

But forces were already in motion. The Louisville Police Department was preparing raids on locations it had linked to Mr. Glover — and Ms. Taylor’s address was on the target list.

In the raid that ensued, Ms. Taylor was fatally shot. Her name has since become a rallying cry for protesters. Today, in the first of two parts, we explore Ms. Taylor’s life and how law enforcement ended up at her door.

Guests: Rukmini Callimachi, a correspondent for The Times, and Yoruba Richen, a documentary filmmaker, talk to Ms. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer; her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker; and her cousin, Preonia Flakes.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Background reading:

This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
I gotta get honor, I'm sorry for men returned on here on the deck in the spring of twenty nineteen, this videos, Circulating online travel fill it to the police in this Louis fell Louisville in Kentucky making a traffic stop. The driver was a black teenage boy about. They both government and he happened to be his high schools, homecoming king and a multiple scholarship winner. Having weapons are no drugs, so he had borrowed Islam. Car to go by a slushy at the local store would be bad little. Any suddenly found himself being pulled out of the car driver on Iraq, report being handcuffed, being searched quibbling clutching your firstly for the offence of making a white turn
and this video that went viral online was far from the first. I'm that something like this had happened in the without there's a call now for a review of metro police policies, claims of racial profiling. Other part of the White police officer who fill in response to Louisville Police Department enacted a series of reforms. These changes are meant to reflect our departments, values and commitment to fair, professionally our actions with the public? We have work to do in terms of building trust in legitimacy with the people that we have sworn to serve and protect, and yet there is very real forms set into motion, arrayed that a few months later killed twenty six year old woman. Her name was Brianna Taylor
from the New York Times. I'm likeable borrow this is a daily real a tailor Rhiannon Taylor over the past five months, Brianna Tailor. The name Brianna Taylor has been A national rallying cry for those demanding changes in american police agree on protein since celebrities speaking out for everyone just three hundred zero. The answer is demanding justice for Brianna Taylor, but, unlike George Floyd, Eric or we shared, Brooks, there's no video capturing,
final moments of her life. Do you not tell a story all story today at Times investigation pieces together. What actually happened to re on a tailor in part? One call a mocking, tells the story of how police ended up at her door. It's Wednesday September knife. Let's get started looking you we're. Does your reporting start for the story? my colleague, the documentary film maker Yoruba written in Louisville. You start off by telling your name and what you're relation is severe, and we spent the next couple of weeks speaking to the people who knew Brianna best managed to make a Palmer after
otters her mom Brianna Taylor, Gennaro, Parma Scareth Walker, her boyfriend. My name is prey on a flight and I am Brianna Cousin, her cousins? I've said relationship was more like sisters, twin cousin pray and bury her very best friends, going all the way back to her childhood. Oh workers and in combination with the thousands of pages of documents that I was able to acquire about her case. What comes across is that this is a young woman who was dealt. I would say a pretty tough hand in life, reaction by now. However, I was like in this believe I was sixteen years old thou, so she was born to a teenage mom. I just knew I had to be a better person, then, at that point
I took it on her dad- was convicted on a merger and drug charge when she was just six years old and was sent to prison for the rest of her life. She, like Brown was a good kid. She was easy. And just as the Yankees sieges was, she was smart, but what you also see amidst the challenges of her early life is a person who was trying to push beyond the limitations of her circumstances. She was one of those people she made a plan. I see where there was there like. It has to be done in this way in, like a guy, just see how she was wanting to be successful. She cannot lie drawback, and so my hair like this, What we're going to do this is how you're going to do it and I'm going to show you how to do it, so it would stick to one of her oldest friends,
said that her mom, when they were children, would not let her go to sleep overs at all, except the sleep over was apprehended house. Why? Because Brianna was considered. The responsible one? She was the one among their little group of friends sure that the other girls got the school on time. If there was a sleep over who made sure that they do their homework, she seem to be taking almost an adult rule in her immediate circle, even as a key I can remember her ban seven years I to my mother. Let me check your blood sugar when she was fair young. She started to show an interest in men. And in health care and in helping other people. Her mom describes how how, when Brianna learn that her grandmother had an insolent problem, she wanted to prick her grandmother finger with a needle and draw blood so that she could test her blood sugar love she thought that was interesting and you go on asking her grandmother if she could do that. Like labour, allow motion
My mother would let her stick her finger in and she was like she was so pumped up to do it and help her. Do her insult I'm like. Oh, my god. We see that in it grade. She begged her mom to give her permission to take the bus and to go start. Working at a local fastfood joint after school. Her friends say that they never really. Her without a job. She taught me stuff. All people by also belongs, not all love, it didn't teach me the family, I king phone, will we not supporter, saw use the main little book status is like who's going to come to my graduation. If I had it, even though I know you don't really mess with me, We, like don't worry about them without by your side. That's all that matters, because I'm a leader Brianna, is the first person and her family to graduate from high school, and she then goes college. Tell me how you met. We met, I guess and twitter
in college I she starts banter on Twitter, with another college student Carlyle Martin, on the time, I guess so to say his name was Kenneth hocker. He went by Kenny to all of his friends. She went to university to Turkey or the western, and they start a sort of. Mogi, filled foretaste too your banter that by twenty sixteen evolved in to the beginnings of a romance in our relationship until I oughta won't be friends, but can be, if we have to be what I wanna be, it was an on again again relationship, but was clear in this back and forth. Is that? Can you see, to really have identified her as the person that he wanted to be his life partner. Soon, I dunno bias was therefore misuse outraged and it was pretty that wasn't a hundred such shore about him some days. It was.
Less married advocating other days like let's be single and live. Carefree. Laughs many towns. I say I'm not mesmer anymore and I'm sure she said the same thing several times, but everybody we spoke to describe them as somebody who genuinely loved her We can be friends that we could be everything else to say when you are trying to do with somebody. I love them whenever you want to be friends with them, also well ass rare. So you come across thank you should try to take advantage. What we now know is that a few months Does she started dating Kenyan twenty? Sixteen. She also
start seeing another man. His name is markov clover and by all accounts he's in many ways the opposite of Kenny to Marcus is a twice convicted drug dealer. He was, tenth in two thousand eight, when he was eighteen years old and Missis That his home state for drug trafficking, And later and twenty fourteen, he moves to Kentucky he's charged again for drug possession and he would spend the next several years in and out of jail, and it bears noting that he he seems to enter her life at what was ostensibly a low point. She had started college, but she dropped out because she felt homesick and was really seeing her family. She got her empty certification and began working as a first responder writing ambulances, but a year into that job. She quit on social media. She says that she was discouraged by the fixing hour shifts and by the low pay
and pretty soon into her relationship which Marcus his problems become her problems, and this is the first time that you see. Police coming and knocking on the door of apartment for at three zero zero. Three sprinkle, Dr Weir, is your voice and they came because, if a favoured that she had done for him, so was that marks. Your mark was the last night club lover so what happiness she had. Rented a car, her own car was apparently in the shop, so she had rented a car from enterprise rent a car and two markets. Glover asked her for the keys she handed over the keys. He then handed them to a third person, a man,
and a couple of hours later that person was found dead, slumped over the wheel of the car. His body was riddled with bullets and on the floor board of the car and in the council. They found several baggies of drugs, but lower was one I would do no harm I don't know who's in the car. Let me use the car. The person that ends up dead at the wheel car is a man, that's known to them. Only by his nickname, Rambo and in fact, he's the brother of one of two Marcus Lovers associates. A member of what turns out to be a criminal drugs syndicate. In that and had gone to jail and multiple occasions, which markets are you all into the game
only that war, nor is it the armies were here than do the guy that they can gain ass. It again, are you working? How do you mean- this money, how do you make your money hey, I'm not a village before? Are you working to reorganise, where a great anxious less mother, where women are worried over forty I saw the police notes and they concluded that Brianna really had no for knowledge of how this car was going to be used and that two markets, and also did not appear to be aware that this man was was going.
It can lead to care all the way back, Hi, I'm Kristen minds are and I'm the co host of innovation uncovered anew podcast the world is changing in real time, often in ways we don't notice and can predict innovation. And covered explores the breakthroughs that our driving our culture. Now from how play to what we consume to how we can act more more what the ideas that are reshaping our reality in extraordinary way as enemies uncovered is upon cast from invest, go cute. You too, and t brand at the New York Times listened today in Basque, Tributor think I'm Eliza ship I am rapporteur for the New York Times. I write about education for a living and the moment is truly, unlike anything I have ever experienced,
are just so many questions. How much will this pandemic widen the gap between wealthy and poor children will home school and become a significant part of the education system? Where does all of this leave working parents and how are teachers adjusting to a radical? What type of schooling, the fact is, the answer to our readers questions are gonna, be really difficult to find because the story chain its day to day, sometimes minute, two minute, but that's what we do at the New York Times. We find the experts, we do the research we hold our leaders to account until we get the answers. We believe you deserve and when the story changes. We do it again if you believe in this kind of work and want to support it, but in my time, stop dot com. Flash subscribe Romania, when you talk to be on a family and her friends did Joe Marcus, and what do they say about him? You know this was
really hard to get out? Because when we spoke to her mother, her cousins, her best friends, you ask about Markets Glover and either they stop making eye contact with you or they say to you that they don't want to talk about him or they say to you that they don't know him. And this relationship is something that we have essentially uncovered through documents. This was clearly something that those who love her did not want to talk about. The closest I got was one of All this childhood friends, somebody who's known her since she was an elementary school and all she would say to me was I didn't like regarding to Marcus. But what we see in the documents that we ve mast is that in the next four years she was on again and off again with Kenny and with two markets and in the period that she's, which Marcus he repeatedly entangles her in his problems and in his runs and dealings with place. This is a man
who is in and out of jail, and he asks her to pay his bail twice in twenty seventeen and then later in twenty nineteen. You see her paying bail for another man, another accuse drug dealer who was a friend of two Marcus's and who was believed to be part of this criminal syndicate. Alongside that same year, twenty nineteen. That's the year that the video of the homecoming king getting pulled over binding legal police goes viral urban and walks around. Comes on the origin of all out when you get up and when he gets killed over infraction of making a white turn things very quickly, escalate he's Pulls out of his car by the White police officer without prejudice for what Barbara down were allowed to do he's on the phone with this month and the cough speaking searching his car for trucks? Replace them?
please they opened his mom eventually shows up they over their play hard for driving out of your programme. I tried it up. I will take you there and in the conversation That ensues. Another officer begins to explain to them on the larger strategy of what their training deal with these traffic stocks it this time, given how we're out here for hours were about with just we listen to me, because I wanted what they would do, as they would identify an area that had a high crime rate, and then they would flood that area with police officers. Who would pull people over minor offences for turning without signalling for having can t light for making a white and once the people were pulled over, they would search their cars for drugs or for other contraband and essentially look for evidence of more serious offences.
I appreciate your being out here for violent crimes must be silent. Once everywhere violently the car here right now and you go home and tell me how typically all violent crime as a result be created. Lot of bad well between the city's police department and the studies by population, black people who just go about their daily lives were getting pulled over an aggressive he searched when they were doing nothing more than like the teenage boy. The viral video going to the store to get a slushy and his mom's car I'll be back. You ve got court October second for improper turning. Some of us have used in areas which are already have one suit. It just so happens that the weak, that's the video, the homecoming king went viral. That weak coincided with a visit to the department of,
Leasing expert named Robin angle, she's, a professor at the University of Cincinnati, and she has been promoting a different approach to policing that has actually really been successful and borne fruit and a couple of communities, including Cincinnati in LAS Vegas, The video caused the uproar that it caused. The police chief pulled her aside in the conference room and said to her. How can we do better and what was your answer? Her answer was, instead of flooding a large area with police, you go hyper, focused and Look at a micro location that has been the focus of repeat crime, a storefront, an abandoned warehouse, a city block an apartment building, and you ask yourself what is it about that specific location? What are the parameters of that location that are making a conducive to repeat cry, and then, once you identify that place, you begin putting a lot of
police resources in two monitoring that micro location and she told about how this method of policing had dramatically reduced violent crime as much as seventy to eighty percent in one particular neighborhood in Cincinnati. So when the police chief hears about this, he naturally got excited, and by December last year the police Department had created its own squad that was going to target crime through this So the next thing that happens is the identify the area of the city that has the highest crime and they end up honing in on a street called Elliot Avenue, the twenty four hundred block of Elliot Avenue, basically one city block- so it was on this block that they erected a pull camera in January. What they size is that, within an hour of erecting the camera on January second, between fifteen and
when he cars, had stopped in front of twenty four twenty four Elliot Avenue Twenty four twenty four earlier avenue was one of four trap: houses or drug houses that were being operated by two markets Glover, and this is how to Marcus, basically ends up in the crosshairs of this new squad. That was, aid for the purpose of reforming police conduct in the city that same day, this is. Your second, in addition to seeing the fifteen to twenty cars that stopped in front of this These are presumably customers who are coming and going buying drugs. They see between five and six Pierre that evening a shovelling impala pull up. They run the plates and they learn that that car is registered to Brianna Teller, hello. This is a free call from the next day
the third of January, an inmate at Louisville Metropolitan Corrections Department to Marcus First arrested and he makes series of recorded phone calls to Brianna Taylor from jail, hello location, always formed only in one of those recorded calls. You here to Marcus Clover, asking her to read his bail by contacting another associate of his you say he was already beggar. The Tripoli tourmaline desolated overseas counter they culpable. Why, now and in these cars here we have to come out to be buried So I got hit by a bus English reversing obey you can send intimacy between them. Working
Were you want anything the word, right now. Mom, I can wait up the other. Our teacher will you. I are still alive. Will you allow Nostoc boy
who are we knew about you? You're from a common charter? Mother should or should not walk about your city. Markets gets bailed out and in the course of the next two months, this newly created squad continues. Well the trap house at the twenty four hundred block of Elliot Day and are putting the GPS onto Marcus's car and that cheap years shows that he makes repeated trips in January between the trap house, Brianna tellers apartment. They also sent police to watch her apartment and on one day in MID January, they photograph to Marcus going into her apartment and emerging from it with a package in his hands and then driving straight back to the trap house on.
Rotation in February they film her and him arriving in the same car at the trap house. He has seen getting out of the driver side door she's in getting out of the passenger side door. He goes into the trap house, he comes back out and they drive away together, but the thing that the police had missed as they were airing out this intense surveillance with the new Ark of Brianna Taylor's life that had been building for some time. This is messages from January. It says this year, I'm coming for everything she said, I'm speaking it into existence and she sent to emojis with the fingers crossed and some hearts. She was color for everything she wanted this year, two thousand, when he was here.
After leaving her job as an anti. She got back on her feet and she got a job as an emergency room technician. She picked up a second, And she was now working basically to jobs at this year, and at another hospital, and you see that her- that that her life to her. Social media posts is really on this positive trajectory she's by herself, a new car she's going to save up or for a home and, crucially, in MID February. She appears to break up for good with to Marcus Lover and the reason I say for good is theirs. Evidence has come out since then that in it AIDS that she actually blocked him on herself on these two they might like. You may be wondering why maybe daddy we going and from what we know everything was like really good. It was great. She seems to commit to Kenny those our love
merge talking baby tat, we had baby names and everything Canonbury. Just for the record. I was too gurney, skinny remakes alike, so they're very much launched on what looks to be a serious relationship, but even as these sweeping dangerous are occurring, embryonic tellers life. The police are barreling forward on their investigation and they believe by March that they have enough evidence to hit five locations that are crucial to to Marcus lovers. Criminals. The cat, four of them are on Elliot Avenue and around Elliot Avenue. These are the trap, houses that he operated and the fifth is the home of Brianna Tenor
tomorrow on the daily. What happened during the police raid all right back. This podcast supported by quickly the streaming service, with fresh original stories that unfold in minutes. Kubi has been nominated ten Emmy awards, including the thriller most dangerous game, starring Liam henceforth the piercingly funny many dummy starring any Kendrick, the topical and intense, from a freeway Sean stirrings too fond James and Lawrence FISH Berne and this thing, John survive with Sophie Turner Watch shows, like you never seen told in minutes download now fear We too weak trial here's what else you need ten thirty
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Transcript generated on 2020-09-09.