Pictured is Breonna Taylor, whom Louisville Metro police shot and killed in March when they barged into her home unannounced via a no knock warrant, Taylor unarmed and shot eight times. Taylor would have turned 27 on June 5
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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky-Women's March, at the national level out of Washington, D.C., and per the local chapter out of Cleveland, Ohio, is calling for the two remaining Louisville- Metro cops involved in the shooting death in March of unarmed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor fired, only one of the police officers, detective Brett Hankinson, terminated behind the tragic killing of the young Black woman.
The other two officers who were with Hankison when he gunned down Taylor at her home three months ago, Sgt, Jonathan Mattingly and officer Myles Cosgrove, remain on administrative leave with pay, and none of them, including Hankison, have been indicted on criminal charges.
"There are still two other officers, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, on the force who were involved in Breonna's murder and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer must fire all of them," a spokesperson for Women's March National said in a statement.
Cleveland activist Kathy Wray Coleman, a head organizer of Women's March Cleveland, agreed.
"We call for immediate indictments on criminal charges against all three involved police officers relative to the tragic shooting death of Breonna as well as the firings also of officers Mattingly and Cosgrove," said Coleman, who is Black and also a Cleveland community organizer.
Coleman said that Black women face double jeopardy regarding excessive force and racism as they are both Black and female and that "the Black Lives Matter Movement should remember that Black women have always been the cornerstone of any truly effective Civil Rights movement in the country and that we will not be subordinated now or at any time thereafter."
All three cops at issue are White, which has heightened tensions in the Louisville community, the city only 23 percent Black, and Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, just 19 percent Black.
The state of Kentucky, with Louisville its largest city in front of Lexington, has a Black population of a mere eight percent.
Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert J. Schroeder fired Hankison Tuesday, saying he violated departmental rules and procedures, and deadly force standards in shooting and killing Taylor.
"When Hankison and two other plainclothes officers used a no-knock warrant to enter Taylor’s apartment March 13, he wantonly and blindly fired 10 rounds," said Chief Schroeder in firing Hankison.
Then a 26-year- old emergency room technician, police shot and killed Taylor on March 13 in her Louisville apartment after three cops barged in via a no-knock narcotics warrant, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, firing a gun off when they entered allegedly unannounced, and Taylor, in turn, killed by police due to no fought of her own.
She was shot eight times.
Police claim her residence was suspected of drug activity and that a car registered to her was allegedly seen parked at a nearby residence under police surveillance for alleged drug dealing activity by an ex- acquaintance of Taylor.
No drugs were found in Taylor's apartment.
Taylor's family and attorneys for the family want the remaining two cops fired also, and criminal charges brought against all three police officers.
“By the department's own assessment, he [Hankinson] committed wanton endangerment, wanton murder and wanton attempted murder," lawyers Benjamin Crump, Lonita Baker and Sam Aguiar said in a joint statement of Hankinson, the detective who gunned down Breonna, a young woman in her prime.
June 5 would have been Brenonna's 27th birthday, had she not been gunned down in March by Louisville Metro police,
Federal lawmakers like U.S. Sen Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, both former presidential candidates and potentials to be on Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden's ticket as vice president commented on her would-have-been birthday.
"Today should have been Breonna's 27th birthday but her life was horrifically taken by officers," said Sen Harris in a tweet on Breonna's would-have-been birthday. "Keep up the calls for justice."
Sen. Warren tweeted that Taylor is among so many Blacks victimized by racism and police brutality in America.
"We honor their lives by continuing the fight for justice," tweeted Warren, "for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Stephon Clark, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and all the Black lives we've lost to racist violence."
Taylor's shooting death by police drew protests in Louisville, which came behind the police killing on May 25 of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, the rally for Taylor also culminating in calls for systemic changes in policing.
Seven people got shot in the crowd during one of Louisville's protest for justice for Breonna, one critically, and who or whom did the shooting or shootings into the crowd still under investigation.
Floyd's killing, like that of Breonna, has heightened racial unrest across the country.
A 46-year-old Black man, Floyd died when since fired White cop Derek Chauvin, the arresting officer, held his knee on his neck until he killed him, and before a crowd of people as the Black man pleaded for his life and cried out that he could not breathe.
Chauvin and the other three involved officers, all of them White, were immediately fired.
Chauvin has since been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter and is out of jail after posting 10 percent of a millions dollar bond.
The other three officers have been charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin, only one of them posting the $750, 000 bond a judge handed to each of them.
Arrested on a forgery charge over a counterfeit $20 bill, the murder by police of Floyd, 46, has resurrected anger in the Black community relative to Blacks questionably killed by anxious White cops, including Staten Island police murder victim Eric Garner, whom New York police choked to death in 2014, the same year Cleveland police gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a park and recreation center on the city's largely White west side, and the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old community activist who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas in 2015.