Former Suffolk County sheriff and secretary of public safety Andrea Cabral praised the agreement reached Tuesday between the city of Louisville, Ky., and the family of Breonna Taylor, calling it a “great settlement” for incorporating several reforms to the city’s police department.
In March, Taylor was shot and killed in her home by police officers executing a "no-knock" search warrant, during an investigation into her ex-boyfriend. Taylor's death, which occurred around the same time as the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, quickly became a point of pain and outrage for Black Lives Matter protesters and advocates for police accountability.
"There are a number of changes and reforms built into this settlement that really, when you look at them ... give you a window into how wrong the execution of this particular warrant really [was],” Cabral said Thursday during an interview on Boston Public Radio.
In addition to $12 million for Taylor’s family, the settlement includes several reforms to the Louisville Metro Police Department, including changes to policies around obtaining and executing search warrants, and housing incentives to encourage officers to move into designated low-income areas.
Still, to date, none of the officers involved in Taylor’s death have been charged with crimes related to the shooting, to which Cabral said "there is no excuse."
"This was a no-knock warrant. The standard for a no-knock warrant is much higher than for a regular execution warrant, because that essentially means you are barging into a person’s residence without having announced yourself, which greatly increases the risk of harm to everyone involved,” she said.
Cabral is the former sheriff of Suffolk County, former secretary of public safety, and CEO of Ascend.
