Airing Footage Of Breonna Taylor’s Death In A Diner Is Yet Another Example Of The GOP Celebrating Black Death At The Hands Of Police

It isn’t enough that cops can kill Black peo­ple with lit­tle to no con­se­quences, but now Republicans are using our trau­ma to lux­u­ri­ate in their pro-cop narrative.

Bowling Green, Kentucky is less than two hours from Louisville, the city where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police offi­cers while in her home in 2020. Her death was one of the more shock­ing deaths by police in recent years, and so her name rings out in the Black com­mu­ni­ty with a spe­cial pow­er. The Justice Department has charged four offi­cers with fal­si­fy­ing the affi­davit used to obtain the search war­rant in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al civ­il rights laws; one offi­cer plead­ed guilty. Breonna’s fam­i­ly received a $12 mil­lion set­tle­ment, but her death con­tin­ues to be trau­ma­tiz­ing for Black peo­ple, and the trau­ma­tiz­ing hap­pened again last week in Bowling Green.

There’s a restau­rant there that host­ed a Republican group — I’m not going to name them — which came togeth­er to lis­ten to Jonathan Mattingly speak. Mattingly was one of the three offi­cers who fired shots at Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker dur­ing the raid of her home. During the raid, Mattingly was shot by Walker, who thought the cops were intrud­ers. Mattingly, now a retired offi­cer, is the author of a book about the shoot­ing, which I will not name, but in it, he whines about “the woke mob,” so, you know who he is. He also thinks he and Breonna are some­how equal. In his book, he says, “I want my sto­ry to make a dif­fer­ence. I want soci­ety to stop insist­ing on some­one to blame for every cri­sis and tragedy. I don’t want anoth­er Breonna Taylor or anoth­er John Mattingly.” Gross. I don’t know how he became one of the vic­tims here, but white vic­tim­hood is so pow­er­ful it can leap a loco­mo­tive in a sin­gle bound.

Mattingly has told his sto­ry many times — in the book and in var­i­ous inter­views — but for some rea­son, this Republican group need­ed him to come to its event and tell his sto­ry again. This is part of the right’s bizarre fetish of lion­iz­ing peo­ple who kill Black peo­ple and their allies. You see the way they have made Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero because he killed peo­ple at a BLM ral­ly — right-wing star slash lunatic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said Rittenhouse is a hero who deserves a Congressional Gold Medal. Wow.

The Republican group who host­ed Mattingly said he “has the right to share his expe­ri­ence” and I mean, yeah, sure, Mattingly does have the right to share his expe­ri­ence, but of all the peo­ple in the world, why are they so inter­est­ed in hear­ing his wide­ly avail­able sto­ry again? They also said “Other indi­vid­u­als with first­hand expe­ri­ence relat­ing to this case are wel­come to request an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to our orga­ni­za­tion as well,” but there’s one liv­ing indi­vid­ual who was there who tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry — Kenneth Walker. I am sure they are not inter­est­ed in hear­ing his first­hand expe­ri­ence. If we’re being real, we know this was not a gen­uine “let’s just hear what he has to say” sit­u­a­tion. We know they weren’t there to get down to the truth. They want­ed anoth­er chance to lux­u­ri­ate in their pro-cop narrative.

But there’s more. The night that Mattingly spoke, most of the restau­rant was still open to guests and, at some point, they all were forced to be part of the show. According to some of the guests, the lights in the restau­rant dimmed, and both audio and police body­cam footage were broad­cast in the restau­rant. Can you imag­ine sit­ting in some mid-lev­el restau­rant try­ing to get through a meal when some­one starts blast­ing footage of a Black per­son get­ting killed by police? That’s traumatizing.

It’s already trau­ma­tiz­ing that we are bom­bard­ed by these images via tra­di­tion­al media and social media, con­stant­ly com­ing up against these lit­tle snuff films where Black lives are end­ed. We are shown these images so often, and they are so sear­ing and painful that I know that most Black peo­ple have about 20 or 25 Black killings in their mem­o­ry that they can call up at any time. We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings. If I just call out the names of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice … we see the footage in our minds. We car­ry that around with us all the time, and it’s some heavy emo­tion­al bag­gage. I don’t know what impact that’s hav­ing on all of us, but it’s sure­ly corrosive.

Those poor din­ers had the images and the sound of Breonna’s death played while they ate. It’s cru­el and unusu­al, but it also reminds me of the way white peo­ple in this coun­try would take pho­tographs of lynch­ing and turn them into post­cards as a way of cel­e­brat­ing the destruc­tion of a Black body and the per­pet­u­a­tion of white power.

The pres­i­dent of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chap­ter, Ryan Dearbone, said, “It is beyond rep­re­hen­si­ble to sub­ject any­one, let alone chil­dren and cus­tomers of African-American descent, to such inde­cent expo­sure, graph­ic and upset­ting images while they were attempt­ing to enjoy their meal. Such dis­turb­ing occur­rences must not be tol­er­at­ed espe­cial­ly in places of pub­lic accom­mo­da­tion. At a min­i­mum, these acts are devoid of human­i­ty and vio­late the most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human decency.”

Amen.