Louisville Will Give Breonna Taylor’s Family $12 Million

The city of Louisville, Kentucky will pay the family of Breonna Taylor $12 million after a historic agreement that included detailed promises of police reform that could prevent future killings by police in that city. The $12 million settlement is one of the largest ever for the wrongful death of a Black woman, family attorney Benjamin Crump told CNN, and came just six months after Taylor’s death.

Breonna Taylor was an EMT worker who was killed in her sleep after police broke into her house with a no-knock search warrant in March. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, mistook the cops for intruders and shot at them before police fired back, hitting Taylor eight times.

No one involved in Taylor’s murder was fired nor convicted. When the Black Lives Matter movement regained momentum in May, Taylor’s name became a prominent one in a roster of high-profile victims of police brutality in recent years. Earlier this month, the New York Times released an in-depth documentary about Taylor’s murder on Hulu and FX, which reinvigorated calls demanding justice for her death.

Although the agreement between the city of Louisville and Taylor’s family admitted to no wrongdoing by the city, it promised to implement an “early warning” system that would flag officers who used excessive force, according to the New York Times. It also promised to implement a program in which police officers would have to live in the communities that they policed.

“As significant as today is, it is only the beginning of getting full justice for Breonna,” Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother, said in reference to the fact that the cops who killed Taylor have not been arrested. “We must not lose focus on what the real job is and with that being said, it’s time to move forward with the criminal charges because she deserves that and much more.”