LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two Kentucky lawmakers are reigniting efforts to ban the use of no-knock warrants nationwide nearly four years after the death of Breonna Taylor.
During a botched raid in March 2020, Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) officers broke down the door to Taylor’s apartment in the middle of night using a no-knock warrant. The Department of Justice (DOJ) later revealed police used falsified information to obtain the warrant.
“It’s been four years,” Breonna’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said. “It continues to be hard, but I still fight, and I still make sure that what happened to Breonna doesn’t happen again, and that’s really what’s important here.”
On Monday, she joined Congressman Morgan McGarvey (D-KY-03) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to announce the ‘Justice for Breonna Taylor Act.’
The bill would require federal officers announce their "authority or purpose," when serving warrants and take federal funding away from police departments who don't.
“We know this works,” McGarvey added. “There isn’t [a national drinking age]. The drinking age is tied to federal highway money, and if you want your federal highway money, you have got to be 21 years old to drink in any state in the country.”
No-knock warrants were banned in Louisville and Lexington, and heavily restricted in the rest of Kentucky, following Taylor’s death.
According to EndAllNoKnocks, a non-profit project pushing against the unannounced raids, 30 other states already restrict no-knock warrants to some degree, yet tens of thousands of no-knock warrants are still executed every year.
“If we can do this in Kentucky, we can do this nationally,” McGarvey said.
Paul introduced a similar nationwide ban shortly after Taylor’s death, but it got stuck in committee. He believes this time could be different with more bipartisan support from McGarvey in the House and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) in the Senate.
“I do this because, not only because I care about the people behind the door, but I also care about the police. I think it’s a very dangerous raid for police,” Paul said. “There’s a lot of better ways to arrest people that don’t involve going in in the middle of the night.”
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