Talk:Killing of Breonna Taylor/Archive 2

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Reason magazine piece “Was the Search Warrant for the Drug Raid That Killed Breonna Taylor Illegal?”

@John2510: I am a bit mystified by this minor disagreement we seem to be having over this Reason magazine piece... even if it's just repeating the contents of the Washington Post opinion piece rather than doing its own reporting as your most recent edit comment would appear to convey—though I would note that Reason has incorporated the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy since 2017 and does not lack for its own journalistic legal resources, and the sentence linking to the Richards v. Wisconsin ruling full text, which you did not appear to initially notice, is written in Reason's own voice to my eye—isn't it just as much a reliable secondary source as the New York Magazine article I also cited that sentence with?

I don't understand why you keep deleting the Reason citation but leaving the New York Magazine one put. I checked for all the facts you added in your re-write of the sentence and they're also present in Reason. I'd actually regarded Reason as the more substantial source between the two of them.

...and okay, I'm now seeing that your rewrite of the sentence was a nearly wholesale cut and paste from New York Magazine, punctuation and spacing and all. What the shit, this is an AE page. Great, WP:COPYVIO... I was just about to go to bed, the last thing I wanted to do was surprise mandatory paperwork. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 02:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, none of the sources contain the analysis that was in your edit, and only the "Reason" article even mentions the Richards case. It's not appropriate to list sources after the discussion of the Richards case if they don't even mention in. That's why I took out one source, and then removed the material as being unsourced. The source didn't support the statement, and then the statement had no source. The "Reason" article, piece does not say that "Because the affidavit for the no-knock warrant for Taylor's residence repeated very similar language from the other four warrants which did not apply to Taylor, it may have been improper under the Supreme Court ruling Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 (1997)." Instead, the "Reason" article states that a WaPo opinion piece says that the warrant violated Richards because the warrant's lack of specificity allowed those executing it to target Taylor and her boyfriend, as part of an investigation in which their involvement was never firmly established and whose main suspect and accomplices were already in police custody. I used the sentence out of the article to avoid suggestion that I hadn't fairly characterized it. I think it falls under "fair use" but you're welcome to paraphrase it, if you prefer. I also question whether "Reason" quoting from an opinion piece and then attributing it as a statement of the WaPo is a RS, but I won't argue that at this point. It seems arguably informative, regardless of the source.John2510 (talk) 12:20, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Right... the bit about the similarity of the warrants is from the USA Today source which you also keep deleting from the sentence. I could see an argument for splitting it up into two sentences to clarify the multiple sources faulting the warrant with slightly different reasoning, but you're just deleting sources in that sentence and introducing copyvio. Thank you for restoring the separate USA-Today-based paragraph though, I had deleted that by accident.

As far as the WP:COPYVIO, you'll want to make any legal arguments like (unmarked, unattributed) fair use at WP:ARE; it's in their hands now. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 12:54, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 October 2020

Instead of plainclothes police officers, it should be noted the officers were clearly wearing body armor with police and department identification. This is evident in the released body camera footage when one of the officers involved in the shooting re-enters the scene while SWAT is on station. 75.174.58.39 (talk) 04:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 04:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I think you're confusing plainclothes and undercover. They were definitely plainclothes officers. Plainclothes doesn't mean you're not wearing a marked vest, etc. It just means you're not wearing your uniform. Bueller 007 (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the specific definition of plainclothes, but I think at best there was some reported photos from after the shooting which showed some of the officers with a vest and "Police" on it and even mounts for body cams, but I don't think it was definitive that it reflects what they wore at the scene. I do see a lot of sources using plainclothes. Editors can provide specific sources here for discussion if they think there is something more definitive.—Bagumba (talk) 05:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

It almost certainly reflects what they wore at the scene (but it is accurately described as "plainclothes". To be clear, a cop in jeans wearing a labelled vest is still "plainclothes".) This is speculation, but I'm 99% sure the cops wouldn't bust down someone's door on a raid without wearing a protective vest, so that's almost certainly accurate. (But whether there's a bodycam mount or not is irrelevant. It's easy to imagine that a cop just grabs a vest and throws it on without worrying about whether it still had the body cam mount on it from the previous user... It's pretty lousy evidence of the conspiracy theory that they had body cams during the raid.) Bueller 007 (talk) 11:40, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

OK. My dictionary defined it as "ordinary clothes rather than uniform, especially when worn as a disguise by police officers", which left me with the impression that they had nothing that said "police" on it.—Bagumba (talk) 12:04, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I would suggest including both. The fact that they are "plainclothed" is relevant only to imply that their identity as police was unclear. If they were wearing vests, etc. that would suggest they were police, it should be included for balance. Otherwise, I would recommend removing the "plainclothed" reference. John2510 (talk) 13:35, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia should operate under the assumption that its users generally know how words are used. We don't need an explanation of what plainclothes means in the lede. It's just cruft. If we want to mention that they were wearing labelled vests (etc.) later in the article when the entry/raid is discussed, that seems fine. But I think we need a reference that specifically says that that's what they were wearing at that time. Even though I'm sure it's true that they were wearing those vests, the only references I've seen have just been photos of the officers taken after the fact along with various speculation. But if there's an article that says they were wearing labelled vests at the time of the raid, it should be fine in the body of the article. Bueller 007 (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

To add to article

To add to this article: Walker's statement (made to CBS News's Gayle King) that the police did not identify themselves:

Kenneth Walker: “There was a loud bang at the door. Nobody was responding, when we were saying, 'Who is it?'”

Gayle King: “You all did ask, 'Who is it?'”

Kenneth Walker: “Several times. Several times, both of us. And there was no response.”

Gayle King: “You know, the police say that they said several times, ’It’s the police.’”

Kenneth Walker: “If they knock on the door and say who it was, we could hear them. It was dead silent. I know, a million percent sure, that nobody identified themselves.”

173.88.246.138 (talk) 03:04, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

The no knock warrant information is not relevant-other than it being misinformation exploited by the attorneys and grievance industry

That information is not relevant, prominently near the top of the page despite such detail lacking from 99.99percent of the RS material and ofc says zero of the proliferation of that misinformation for divisive purposes. It is UNDUE not relevant and five paragraphs worth before the truth is posted in one sentence.

Also, the sentence in the lede according to officials.......shot by Walker. According to officials should be removed or less preferred replaced by according to ballistics' tests. This is no longer an unsubstantiated claim that should have doubt cast upon it with the dubious according to officials.

2601:46:C801:B1F0:548E:DC6:8037:BCE5 (talk) 00:07, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

So just for posterity's sake, and lest they should disappear from the article: the (thoroughly-cited) facts referred to here are

• that the LMPD has pulled so much shit that the USPIS is no longer willing to work with them, which is why this same group of officers saying they totally knocked and announced themselves, yes siree Scout's honor, passed all their postal inquiries through the Shively, Kentucky PD—reported from secondary sources on transcripts of the supervisor of the Shively Special Investigations Unit's interviews with LMPD internal affairs
• that the officers who planned and carried out the botched drug raid actually knew from Shively that USPIS was saying no suspicious packages had been received at Taylor's address, personally relayed by Mattingly to Vance before the raid, even, but Vance had misrepresented this in the no-knock warrant application
• that on top of that the affidavit for the search warrant was improper under Supreme Court rulings by presenting generic "drug dealers do dangerous stuff and destroy evidence" statements as the reasonable suspicion for the warrant which had nothing to do with Taylor—the libertarian magazine Reason actually referred to the warrant as "illegal" but I stuck with "improper"
• and that the judge who approved the warrant did so as part of a stack of five of them completed in twelve minutes on the preceding day. (Another judge and colleague has written an op-ed claiming he just knows that Judge Shaw spent tons of time reviewing the warrants and the twelve minutes right before lunch was just the time spent physically signing the warrants, but that's why an op-ed isn't a reliable source. Or if we want to start using opinion pieces now, I've got a whole lotta them I'd love to add to the article too, some of which are actually of higher quality than some of the supposedly-journalistic sources the article is currently based on.)

Anyways, IP, I'd welcome hearing in more detail why these specifics aren't relevant to the subject of the article. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 09:27, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree it needs to be in there, but I think the article also needs some structural cleanup. It seems that appropriate content is somewhat randomly scattered. Legal analysis may be mixed in too much with the recitation of the facts in a way that's distracting. I may take a stab at it. A "Background" section would be appropriate - to set the factual stage. The warrant should probably be separated from the raid in the chronology, and in the analysis.John2510 (talk) 20:02, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

@John2510: Makes sense to me—my priority when writing was to make sure the accurate, cited information got in there and untangling everything else was a much larger project, so go ahead and take a stab at it. Though I, and of course any other editor, might have our own ideas too.

As far as the footnote you deleted, it seemed fairly straightforward and uncontroversial to me given the text of the fourth amendment and the text of Richards v. Wisconsin, but I'm okay with leaving it out. (Also btw the Reason article directly links to the full text of Richards v. Wisconsin, so I restored it and added it to the WP:INTEXT you'd put.)

Also, far be it from me to criticize someone else's personal editing style, but I feel that given recent talk page developments I should point out that you seem to have deleted a source first as not supporting the text it was attached to, the USA Today one from the same paragraph, and then subsequently deleted the text that I'd derived from it as not supported by the remaining source you hadn't deleted. So I would submit that perhaps rapid tiny edits are not always superior. But of course I would be a chauvinist for my own personal editing preferences. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 22:29, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I see zero that addresses the explicit WP guidelines this material violates cited above. It is WP/UNDUE and in no way, shape or form balanced with the complete absence of any mention of it being used for months as misinformation. I also see zero that has anything to do with the shooting of Breonna Taylor. Go start an article on the warrant if it is that notable and needs such depth to cast doubt on the topical fact that they executed a knock and announce warrant. The oversell is a weak tell that WP which is supposed to be encyclopedic is going to extraordinary length for some cause beyond presenting a NPOV encyclopedic page.2601:46:C801:B1F0:D46F:33D4:5507:FAE3 (talk) 01:44, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

How was it used for months as misinformation, exactly, IP? Note that you can't have it both ways—you can't claim that the fact that the raid was conducted under a no-knock warrant is lacking from 99.99percent of the RS material and simultaneously say that it was repeated and repeated for months and months. Contrary to the impression you're trying to give, all RS did not simply jump to change their story in late August as the NYT did.

We still pretty much have only the word of Mr. “I condone violence in all of its forms” Cameron (an exclamation which, again, he disavows as a misstatement, but it seems more like an archetypal Freudian slip) and the officers, contradicting all other witnesses except for the one who changed his story two months after the initial interview, that some unspecified, undocumented authority or internal process changed orders so as to serve the no-knock warrant as knock-and-announce.

Interestingly, the one bit of physical evidence that might corroborate the governmental narrative, which I'd added to the article—the photograph of the planning white board—has been removed. Probably because the source was actually one of Walker's legal team's court filings, but if we can find an acceptable source that confirms it I'd support re-adding the fact to the article. But of course—the officers didn't have the white board out in the field with them, they had the paperwork which said "no knock" on it. Or if there was paperwork saying "knock and announce", it has not to my knowledge been produced, not even as part of Cameron's "internal investigation" which did not bother to answer how the orders were supposedly changed. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 03:14, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Friendly fire does not seem conclusively disproven

Since Bueller 007 wrote the following as the edit comment for this edit, this claim that he was hit by friendly fire should probably just be removed. it seems pretty clear that it is likely to be untrue, I want to say here that I disagree. If you look at the sources which interview Walker's legal team and at their court filings, the narrative they're sometimes implying and sometimes openly stating seems plausible to me—hardly a closed case, but plausible given the other facts and evidence established in relation to the case.

I think the friendly fire claims should not be removed until at least the litigation is resolved. Only the ballistics evidence and forensics and pathology expert opinions should be discussed in the article or here, though—the complete theory is of a nature that shouldn't even be mentioned in a talk page governed by WP:BLP.

(I'll take this opportunity to reiterate that all individuals mentioned in this article are covered by BLP: Taylor as a recently deceased person, Walker, the people who were actually the subjects of the drug trafficking investigation, etc.—not just the officers.) --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 03:14, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

It's pretty hard to see why that should be in the article. The ballistics officers couldn't conclusively confirm or deny based on *markings* that it specifically came from Walker's 9mm pistol, but they did say it was 9mm. The officers were all carrying 40-cal; Walker was the only person on the scene with 9mm. So, unless you are positing conspiracy theory (shooter with a 9mm on the grassy knoll?) or quantum tunneling of a 9mm bullet into a man's leg, there was a 9mm bullet in the cop's leg and a single 9mm bullet missing from Walker's magazine... That the markings are poor is irrelevant. Bueller 007 (talk) 03:38, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I take it, since you bring up quantum tunnelling, that you are not actually looking at sources which interview Walker's legal team and at their court filings? Because those sources definitely do not show them proposing quantum tunnelling or any of your other suggestions.

I further take it that your position isn't really merely that the truth in this matter seems pretty clear as you said in your edit comment, but rather than Wikipedia should take a specific editorial stance that Kenneth Walker shot a cop and that friendly fire is not among the many mistakes the officers made—and should take that editorial stance ahead of the outcome of the legal process? Not only is expressing that kind of certainty in its own voice not how Wikipedia works, not when there are reliable sources documenting opposing viewpoints, but it does not seem particularly prudent given previous revelations in connection with this incident—which have demonstrated a lack of complete honesty and transparency, shall we say, on the part of the LMPD. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 06:16, 17 October 2020 (UTC)