Breonna Taylor Live Updates: 2 Officers Shot in Louisville Protests
Protests in Seattle and Portland were effectively declared to be riots after demonstrators set fires and threw explosives at the police.
Two Louisville police officers were shot during demonstrations on Wednesday night, the police chief said, after a grand jury decided to not charge any officer in the killing of Breonna Taylor, instead indicting one former detective for recklessly firing into another apartment during the raid of Ms. Taylor’s home.
Robert J. Schroeder, the Louisville police chief, said at a brief news conference that a suspect was in custody and that neither of the officers’ injuries were life-threatening. One of the officers was alert and stable, and the other was in surgery, he said.
“I am very concerned about the safety of our officers,” Chief Schroeder said. “Obviously, we’ve had two officers shot tonight, and that is very serious; it’s a very dangerous condition.”
Although no officer was charged with killing Ms. Taylor, grand jurors indicted Brett Hankison, a former detective, on three counts of “wanton endangerment” earlier on Wednesday, saying he had threatened the lives of three people who lived next to Ms. Taylor’s apartment by firing bullets that landed in theirs.
In the hours after that announcement, 46 people were arrested during protests in Louisville, said Sgt. Lamont Washington, a police spokesman.
The shooting of the two officers happened during a video livestreamed by the Louisville Metro Police Department, in which officers could be seen marching south down South Brook Street from East Broadway. In the video, several projectiles were launched from the area of the police line and made loud bangs as they burst in the air.
Moments later, several other bangs were heard, and the officers scattered. A spokesman said the officers were shot several blocks away, near the corner of South Brook and East College Streets.
“Shots fired, shots fired,” the woman recording the livestream said as she ran for cover. At least a dozen officers took cover behind a police truck, and officers began shouting “Officer down!”
“Get to cover!” another yelled, as the officers retreated toward a nearby Walgreens. “We got one down!”
A group of about 350 protesters split up at the sound of gunshots, many running through parking lots and nearby yards. The police shot at least one protester in the neck with a projectile.
In Los Angeles, they gathered in front of the Hall of Justice. In Dallas, they gathered outside the Police Department headquarters. In Minnesota, they gathered at the Capitol.
And in Norfolk, Va., one man held a sign that said, “There are Breonnas everywhere.”
Anger over Ms. Taylor’s killing and the prosecutors’ handling of the case has spread far from Louisville, with protests on Wednesday night drawing crowds in New York, Chicago and Seattle. Some rallies, like those in Portland, Maine, and Memphis, were small but vocal.
Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of New York, including a group in Brooklyn that met outside the Barclays Center and swelled to around 2,000 people as it marched across the Manhattan Bridge and shut down traffic. Huey Freeman said that she had been protesting since demonstrations began this summer, and that seeing so many people gather again felt like a resurgent movement. “It means that the people want justice even if the system doesn’t,” she said.
In Portland, Ore., a person in a crowd of protesters threw a Molotov cocktail at a line of police officers, sending the officers running for safety as flames erupted on the street. Others in the crowd of several hundred lit small fires on the facade of a Portland Police Bureau building, and the authorities declared the gathering a riot.
In St. Paul, Minn., Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who was fatally shot by a police officer in 2016, spoke at a rally outside the Capitol. “I don’t want this incident to get swept under the rug and everybody forgets about all the innocent lives that have been taken,” Ms. Reynolds said. “We can never forget about any of these lives.”
The police in Denver arrested a man who they said drove a car into a protest near the State Capitol building Wednesday night. No injuries were reported. Video taken by a reporter for The Denver Post showed a crowd surrounding the vehicle before the driver accelerated through them, throwing one person to the ground.
About 100 people joined the Rev. Michael Pfleger in a march on Chicago’s South Side, stopping to shut down traffic in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood for about an hour. The protesters using a gallon of fake blood to spell out “Breonna” in the middle of the intersection, and then sat in the street and chanted, “We want justice, we want it now.”
In Seattle, about 200 protesters in raincoats and ponchos marched through downtown. Video posted on social media showed police officers on bikes riding over a person who attempted to block their way. Another clip showed an officer being hit in the head with a baseball bat. Shortly after midnight, the police declared the protest unlawful. At least 13 people were arrested, according to the police, and multiple officers were injured, including the one hit in the head with the bat.
The Georgia Department of Public Safety’s SWAT team used “less lethal gas” after “unruly protesters” in Atlanta ignored orders not to climb on a SWAT vehicle, said Franka Young, a department spokeswoman. One video posted on Twitter shows a SWAT team member pushing, then kicking a canister that is releasing a white gas toward protesters.
In Buffalo, a pickup truck drove through a group of protesters in Niagara Square about 8:45 p.m. and struck a protester who was on a bicycle, the Police Department said. The person who was hit was taken to Erie County Medical Center with what appeared to be non-life-threatening injuries.
About 50 people gathered on a Milwaukee street corner for a candlelight vigil, by turns silent and spirited, in front of a large mural of Ms. Taylor on a brick wall. “This is not going to end until we challenge the systems,” said Pilar Olvera, stressing that Black women could not fight the battle alone. Shortly after, a woman led the crowd in a call and response: “Say her name! Breonna Taylor!”
Professional athletes across the country took to social media to vent their frustrations over the grand jury’s decision, again highlighting their role in focusing public attention on race and policing.
“The white supremacist institution of policing that stole Breonna Taylor’s life from us must be abolished for the safety and well being of our people,” Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, posted on Twitter. Mr. Kaepernick became a political lightning rod and lost his job in the N.F.L. after taking a knee during the national anthem in 2016.
Ms. Taylor’s death was among the few high-profile police shootings in which a woman was killed since the start of the Black Lives Matter movement, and female athletes have been instrumental in directing attention to the investigation.
The W.N.B.A. dedicated its season to Ms. Taylor. Players wore her name on their jerseys, held moments of silence and supported the #SayHerName campaign meant to keep her case in the public eye.
“We time and time again hope for a sliver of justice but why would we get that when the system is designed to protect the very folks that are murdering and terrorizing us,” Layshia Clarendon of the New York Liberty, who is a member of the W.N.B.A.’s Social Justice Council, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “This isn’t a bad apple, it’s a rotten tree.”
“My heart is with the family of Breonna Taylor right now,” wrote Megan Rapinoe, captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team. “My god. This is devastating and unfortunately not surprising. Black and brown fold in this country deserve so much more.”
Members of the N.B.A., who are often ahead of the curve in calling for social justice, were especially vocal about their disappointment in the grand jury’s decision. There were no on-court displays for Ms. Taylor in a game between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat after Wednesday’s announcement, but N.B.A. players spoke out elsewhere, as did the head of their union.
“Sadly, there was no justice today for Breonna Taylor,” Michele Roberts, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, wrote in a statement, saying that Ms. Taylor’s death was the result of “callous and careless decisions made with a lack of regard for humanity.”
