Bay Area

Warrant for Raid on Breonna Taylor’s House Connected to Louisville Gentrification Plan, Lawyers Say

Published

5 years ago

July 9, 2020

Breonna Taylor’s shooting death in Kentucky was the consequence of a Louisville Police Dept. operation intended to clear out a block in western Louisville key to a city plan to gentrify the neighborhood Taylor lived in — lawyers for Taylor’s family allege in an amendment to a lawsuit filed against the city in Taylor’s death.

Taylor was killed in March when police attempted to serve a no-knock warrant to find a man they knew was already in custody. Taylor’s boyfriend, believing they were in danger, fired his gun at the door and police then wantonly shot through a bedroom window. Taylor, an emergency technician, was asleep at the time and was hit by eight bullets.

One of the three officers involved in Taylor’s shooting has been fired, but none have been arrested or charged.

Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, was charged with assault and attempted murder of a police officer but the charges were dropped.

Lawyers allege that a police unit called Place-Based Investigations “deliberately misled” narcotics investigators to believe they were targeting violent drug offenders at the house where Taylor lived in order to speed up the process for a multimillion dollar real estate development plan in the area.

“The execution of this search warrant robbed Breonna of her life and Tamika Palmer of her daughter,” attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Taylor’s family, told a Louisville newspaper over the weekend. “Its execution exhibited outrageous recklessness and willful, wanton, unprecedented and unlawful conduct.”

A representative for the mayor’s office has called the allegation “outrageous.”

According to the lawsuit, the warrants executed in the narcotics investigation on March 13 were intended to eliminate one of the “primary roadblocks” to the development, Jamarcus Glover, who was allegedly involved in narcotics trafficking.

Glover rented a home in the immediate area of the planned development, according to the lawsuit and was an ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s.

To secure the warrant on Taylor’s house, detectives alleged that they had confirmed that Glover was receiving packages there. But that was not true, according to another city agency, the lawsuit says.

That errant connection to Glover is what ultimately led to the raid on Taylor’s apartment, according to the lawsuit.

“Breonna’s home should never have had police there in the first place,” family attorneys say in the lawsuit. “When the layers are peeled back, the origin of Breonna’s home being raided by police starts with a political need to clear out a street for a large real estate development project and finishes with a newly formed, rogue police unit violating all levels of policy, protocol and policing standards… Breonna’s death was the culmination of radical political and police conduct.”

According to the Louisville newspaper the Courier Journal, Louisville PD’s Place-Based Investigations unit was created to address “systemically violent locations.”

“PBI focuses on identifying and disrupting crime place networks,” according to the police department’s website. “These networks include crime sites, but also places used by offenders that do not typically come to the attention of police. PBI will collaborate with other government and community partners to identify and eliminate violence facilitators.”

Meanwhile, “Arrest the Cops Who Killed Breonna Taylor” continues to be a rallying cry on social media and at Black Lives Matter protests.

Brandon Patterson

Posts by Brandon Patterson

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

Published

5 days ago

May 25, 2025

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Bay Area

Chevron Richmond Installs Baker Hughes Flare.IQ, Real-time Flare Monitoring, Control and Reduction System

While the sight of flaring can cause concern in the community, flares are essential safety systems that burn pollutants to prevent them from being released directly into the atmosphere. They activate during startup and shut-down of facility units or during upsets or equipment malfunctions. The typical flare stack is about 200 feet high so that vapors are well above street levels.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 19, 2025

Oakland Post

Image courtesy The Richmond Standard.

The Richmond Standard

Chevron Richmond recently installed flare.IQ, a real-time, automated system that will improve the facility’s flaring performance.

The technology, developed by Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business, uses sensors to monitor, reduce and control flaring in real time. It collects and assesses data on refinery processes, such as temperature, pressure, gas flow and gas composition, and adjusts accordingly to ensure flares burn more efficiently and cleanly, leading to fewer emissions.

“The cleaner the flare, the brighter the flame can look,” said Duy Nguyen, a Chevron Richmond flaring specialist. “If you see a brighter flame than usual on a flare, that actually means flare.IQ is operating as intended.”

“A key element in Baker Hughes’ emissions abatement portfolio, flare.IQ has a proven track record in optimizing flare operations and significantly reducing emissions,” said Colin Hehir, vice president of Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business. “By partnering with Chevron Richmond, one of the first operators in North America to adopt flare.IQ, we are looking forward to enhancing the plant’s flaring operations.”

The installation of flare.IQ is part of a broader and ongoing effort by Chevron Richmond to improve flare performance, particularly in response to increased events after the new, more efficient hydrogen plant was brought online in 2019.

Since then, the company has invested $25 million — and counting — into flare minimization. As part of the effort, a multidisciplinary refinery team was formed to find and implement ways to improve operational reliability and ultimately reduce flaring. Operators and other employees involved in management of flares and flare gas recovery systems undergo new training.

“It is important to me that the community knows we are working hard to lower emissions and improve our flaring performance,” Nguyen said.

Also evolving is the process by which community members are notified of flaring incidents. The Community Warning System (CWS), operated by Contra Costa County is an “all-hazard” public warning system.

Residents can opt-in to receive alerts via text, e-mail and landline. The CWS was recently expanded to enable residents to receive notifications for “Level 1” incidents, which are considered informational as they do not require any community action.

For more information related to these topics, check out the resources included on the Chevron Richmond, CAER and Contra Costa Health websites. Residents are also encouraged to follow @chevronrichmond and @RFDCAOnline on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), where additional information may be posted during an incident.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Hosts Town Hall Addressing Lead Hazards in City Housing

According to the city, there are 22,000 households in need of services for lead issues, most in predominantly low-income or Black and Latino neighborhoods, but only 550 to 600 homes are addressed every year. The city is hoping to use part of the multimillion-dollar settlement to increase the number of households served each year.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Magaly Muñoz

The City of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department hosted a town hall in the Fruitvale to discuss the efforts being undertaken to remove lead primarily found in housing in East and West Oakland.

In 2021, the city was awarded $14 million out of a $24 million legal settlement from a lawsuit against paint distributors for selling lead-based paint that has affected hundreds of families in Oakland and Alameda County. The funding is intended to be used for lead poisoning reduction and prevention services in paint only, not water or other sources as has been found recently in schools across the city.

The settlement can be used for developing or enhancing programs that abate lead-based paint, providing services to individuals, particularly exposed children, educating the public about hazards caused by lead paint, and covering attorney’s fees incurred in pursuing litigation.

Most of the homes affected were built prior to 1978, and 12,000 of these homes are considered to be at high risk for lead poisoning.

City councilmember Noel Gallo, who represents a few of the lead-affected Census tracts, said the majority of the poisoned kids and families are coming directly from neighborhoods like the Fruitvale.

“When you look at the [kids being admitted] at the children’s hospital, they’re coming from this community,” Gallo said at the town hall.

In order to eventually rid the highest impacted homes of lead poisoning, the city intends to create programs and activities such as lead-based paint inspections and assessments, full abatement designed to permanently eliminate lead-based paint, or partial abatement for repairs, painting, and specialized cleaning meant for temporary reduction of hazards.

In feedback for what the city could implement in their programming, residents in attendance of the event said they want more accessibility to resources, like blood testing, and information from officials about lead poisoning symptoms, hotlines for assistance, and updates on the reduction of lead in their communities.

Attendees also asked how they’d know where they are on the prioritization list and what would be done to address lead in the water found at several school sites in Oakland last year.

City staff said there will be a follow-up event to gather more community input for programming in August, with finalizations happening in the fall and a pilot launch in early 2026.