Kentucky's Only Black Female State Lawmaker And Breonnas Law Author Arrested

A Kentucky lawmaker and author of a bill to prohibit no-knock warrants in the state was one of at least 24 people arrested by Louisville police Thursday night, as demonstrators continued to take to the streets after a grand jury declined to bring any murder charges against the three police officers involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor.

State Rep. Attica Scott (D), the only Black woman serving in the state Legislature, was charged with first-degree rioting, failure to disperse and unlawful assembly, Louisville Metro Police said late Thursday . 

The bill proposed by Scott in August is known as “Breonna’s Law,” honoring Taylor, the 26-year-old Black woman shot at her Louisville apartment in March in a botched police raid for which a no-knock warrant had been issued. The officers say they knocked before entering, though that is in dispute.

Scott was arrested along with her daughter and Shameka Parrish-Wright, a leader of the local chapter of the Bail Project, which has worked to help protesters post bail after being arrested. The three were part of a group of demonstrators arrested outside of the main branch of Louisville’s public library. Officers accused them of vandalizing the library, according to a police report.

They were released Friday morning, The Louisville Courier Journal reported .

Elected in 2016, Scott became the first Black woman in over 20 years to serve in the state legislature.

Along with banning no-knock warrants, Scott’s bill would also require police to turn on their body cameras when executing search warrants. The officers who raided Taylor’s residence either were not wearing body cameras or did not have one turned on.

The officers were looking for two men suspected of drug dealing neither of whom were at the apartment. Taylor’s boyfriend has said he thought someone was breaking into the home and he responded by firing a gun that wounded one of the cops. They responded with gunfire that killed Taylor, an emergency room technician.

The first-degree rioting charge Scott faces is a Class D felony — the same level as the “wanton endangerment” charge  the grand jury brought against former police Det. Brett Hankison, who was fired in June. No charges were filed against the other two officers, both of whom remain on the force.

The charge against Hankison stems from shots he fired that entered a different apartment then Taylor’s, meaning that her death did not directly result in any criminal case. Last week, the city of Louisville did agree to pay Taylor’s family $12 million and pledged to reform police practices.

No drugs were found in Taylor’s residence.

CORRECTION: This article previously misstated that Taylor was in bed when she was shot.