LOS ANGELES — Mayor Eric Garcetti told a press conference Wednesday evening that he was “deeply disappointed and saddened by today’s news” in the Breonna Taylor case in Louisville, Kentucky, in which one officer was indicted for wanton endangerment. Two other officers were not indicted by the grand jury.
Garcetti said that the charges in the case “had, unfortunately, nothing to do with the death of Breonna Taylor,” and that the grand jury decision had done “nothing to allay the fears of black families across the country that it could be their daughter, or their son, or the loves of their lives that could be next.”
There was no reported racial motivation alleged in the death of Taylor, who was killed in March in the crossfire when her boyfriend fired at police who were serving a warrant after knocking. They returned fire.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Wednesday that a witness had corroborated police claims that they had identified themselves as they served the warrant.
Nevertheless, Garcetti said that the decision of the grand jury was a reason “why we cannot, as a nation, stop saying ‘Black Lives Matter’.”
He added that the United States had “a shot at birthing, finally, a multiracial democracy.”
Garcetti also provided an update on the fight against the coronavirus, congratulating Los Angeles for avoiding what he called the “worst-case scenario” that had occurred in other places. He urged residents to take the flu vaccine, and warned that hospitalizations, cases, and transmission rates for coronavirus were “slightly up.” He said that if Los Angeles County could maintain low levels of infection for the next 14 days consecutively, the city could move to the next state “tier” of re-opening.
He closed his press conference with a tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Breitbart News asked Garcetti why he was disappointed in the Louisville grand jury decision, given Ginsburg’s commitment to the rights of criminal defendants — and why he thought the U.S. was not yet a “multiracial democracy.”
Garcetti answered: “I agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg of [sic] the rights of a defense. That certainly doesn’t mean that anybody accused of a crime is innocent, or that there shouldn’t be justice.”
On multi-racial democracy, he answered:
It’s kind of like “a more perfect union.” I think we have a shot at doing it. And every day we should be working towards it. But nobody can say that we’re there. That we’re there in a place where representation from the Senate to the Supreme Court, from the CEOs in C-suites of our corporations, that we have achieved a multiracial democracy in which there is a fair shot for everybody, and that we’ve been able to achieve the promise.
Garcetti went on to describe racial economic disparities, and criticized those making it “more difficult to vote.”
Breitbart News also asked Garcetti about recent purchases of protective eyewear for Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers, given that he had also committed to cutting the police budget.
He decried the recent use of “industrial-strength” lasers against police officers in recent demonstrations and said that he would not risk the safety of LAPD officers attacked by lasers.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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