Cross posted to the MRC's NewsBusters blog
When police officers take the lives of criminal suspects, it is appropriate to evaluate each case to discover if the officer's actions were justified, or whether there was wrongdoing, and, when appropriate, take action that fits the circumstances.
But liberal activists on the issue of police violence should not exaggerate to the point of lying to portray law enforcement officers in the worst possible light, nor should the media give them an unchallenged forum to do so.
On Tuesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'donnell show on MSNBC, contributor Zerlina Maxwell repeated a long disproven claim that Louisville resident Breonna Taylor was in her bed sleeping when she was shot to death by police officers who were raiding her home. When asked by host O'Donnell to respond to the latest news that the Louisville police department is pushing to fire two of the officers involved in the case, Maxwell spread misinformation as she complained:
Sitting here today, it feels like the bare minimum. Certainly after a case in which a sleeping woman is murdered in her bed, there needs to be some sort of systemic accountability. That's what protesters are asking for, and certainly her family needs justice. And justice is not the -- in the form of losing your employment when you killed someone in their homes, in their bed, in the course of that employment.
The MSNBC contributor --who also hosts a show on the Peacock network -- then added: "And in this particular case, one of the most egregious facts is the officer that received the harshest punishment -- he shot a wall, and yet the person who shot Breonna Taylor and killed her only loses his employment reportedly, so that is not justice, Lawrence."
It was not clarified that most of the officers who conducted the raid were not involved in the decision to seek a warrant -- originally a no-knock warrant which was changed to knock-and-announce -- and were simply following their orders to make the raid.
Those who fired their weapons into Taylor's apartment did so after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker -- presumably failing to hear them announce they were police -- fired his weapon first. Taylor was shot while she was standing in the hallway as the cops returned fire against Walker.
The officer who applied for the warrant -- Joshua Jaynes -- did not take part in the raid, and is now one of two officers who may be fired by the police department which alleges that he failed to follow the proper procedure and may have misled the judge about how much evidence there was that Taylor was receiving drugs for her ex-boyfriend whom they were about to arrest.
This anti-police episode of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell was sponsored in part by Mr. Clean. Their contact information is linked.
