An officer involved in the raid that led to Breonna Taylor being shot at least eight times was indicted on Wednesday, but only for his charges related to firing into a neighbour’s apartment — not for the death of Taylor.
Following the decision and the resulting protests (during which two police officers received non-life-threatening shooting wounds), Trevor Noah appeared on The Daily Show to pose a question: Who is winning?
“I’m talking about on the ground, the lives of people,” says Noah. “Who is winning? Because to me it looks like nobody is winning.”
“Breonna Taylor’s family isn’t winning. They lost a loved one, they got no justice, and they’ve been thrust into a political firestorm. Black people definitely aren’t winning, because they’ve basically been told that a cop can just barge into your house and shoot you. And not only that, they can say that they were defending themselves in your house. And as if that wasn’t wild enough, they’ll only get in trouble for the shots that they missed?”
Noah goes on to say that the police aren’t winning either, because they lose the trust of the community they’re meant to serve, and Black Lives Matter isn’t winning, because they end up being painted as a violent organisation in the ensuing protests.
“What does it mean when the system says that everything that happened in this Breonna Taylor shooting was legal?” asks Noah. “At that point, you can say mob justice isn’t justice, but then clearly justice isn’t justice, either. And the truth is, people, nobody’s winning. As society we are all losing right now.”
“And until there’s real justice, nobody wins.”