‘This is the right thing ... for the right reason’

Josh Wood

Louisville Courier Journal USA TODAY NETWORK

As thousands took to the streets of Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020 to protest the police killing of Breonna Taylor, among their “Say her name” and “No justice, no peace” slogans was another: “No more no-knocks.”

• Taylor, 26, was killed five years ago early on March 13, 2020, by Louisville Metro Police officers serving a no-knock warrant on her apartment.

• Her boyfriend, who said he believed they were witnessing a home invasion, opened fire when police breached her apartment’s door, striking an officer in the leg. Three LMPD officers responded by firing more than 30 rounds.

Whether officers knocked and announced their presence became a major point of contention, with officers saying they did and decided not to serve the warrant as a no-knock. Taylor’s boyfriend maintained the couple repeatedly shouted “Who is it?” when they heard banging on the door and received no answer.

But Taylor’s death in a raid that resulted from a no-knock search warrant sparked a movement that would ban the practice in Louisville and lead to similar legislative efforts elsewhere across the nation.

“All Breonna wanted to do was save lives,” Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said before Louisville’s Metro Council voted to ban no-knock warrants in June 2020. “So, it’s important this law passes, because with that, she’ll get to continue to do that, even in her death.”

Following Taylor’s death, no-knocks would be limited in Kentucky, and there would be federal legislation introduced in her honor attempting to ban the warrants nationally.

Today, there are restrictions on noknocks in 30 states and more than two dozen cities, according to Campaign Zero, a police-reform group that tracks and encourages legislation banning noknocks.

‘The right thing at the right time for the right reason’

According to former Metro Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith, when she called fellow council member Jessica Green to pitch a total ban on noknock warrants in May 2020, her colleague said: “Girl, you have lost your mind. You’re crazy.”

Sexton Smith said Green, who is now a circuit judge, said she agreed they should be banned, but didn’t think they would be able to get any support.

“She said: ‘Do you realize, it will be you and me and no one else will go with us? We won’t be able to get one more vote. Not one more. Are you sure you want to do this?’ ” Sexton Smith, who retired last year after serving as Mayor Craig Greenberg’s deputy mayor, said she did.

“This is the right thing at the right time for the right reason. And we’re going to do it,” she said.

Green said she was “not at liberty” to speak to The Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, for this story given her current role as a judge.

But despite the initial skepticism, within a matter of weeks of the conversation between Green and Sexton Smith, the council unanimously passed the legislation they sponsored, calling it Breonna’s Law.

Sexton Smith said initial opponents of the bill were eventually won over by the inclusion of wording allowing officers to enter without waiting for a response if “exigent circumstances” exist.

In addition to banning no-knocks, the legislation requires officers serving warrants to use body cameras and to activate the devices at least five minutes before the warrant is served.

After knocking and announcing their presence, officers are required to wait at least 15 seconds or “a reasonable amount of time for occupants to respond, whichever is greater” before making their entry.

Breonna’s Law remains in place in Louisville today.

Restrictions, but no ban, on state level

On April 9, 2021 – just over a year after Taylor was killed by police – Gov. Andy Beshear signed a bill into law restricting no-knock warrants in Kentucky.

Senate Bill 4, which was sponsored by Republican State Senate President Robert Stivers, barred warrants authorizing entry without notice except in cases where there was “clear and convincing evidence” that the alleged crime was violent and that by giving notice, officers would create a safety risk or lead to the destruction of evidence.

The bill also limited no-knocks to between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., except in exigent circumstances.

However, the bill, which passed with unanimous support in the Senate and 92-5 in the House, did not outright ban no-knocks, as some had called for.

Louisville Democrat Attica Scott, who was at the time the first Black woman elected to Kentucky’s legislature in 20 years, introduced her own legislation in 2021 that went further and banned no-knocks.

Beyond requiring officers to knock and announce, the bill required law enforcement officers to submit to drug and alcohol testing following shootings and required all officers serving warrants to wear body cameras.

“It was very disappointing that we had so many people that were willing to acquiesce to the white male legislator’s bill that was not a full ban, but it was a sometimes ban in certain situations,” Scott, who gave up her state House seat in an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022, told The Courier Journal.

She added that attitudes toward her bill in the legislature were “horrible” and that she found herself dealing with some lawmakers who believed Taylor was involved in illegal activities because they were “believing the initial lies that came out.”

Five years after Taylor’s death, Scott is uncertain a total ban on no-knocks will ever materialize in Kentucky.

“In all honesty, I don’t even know if my own political party, the Democratic Party, has the backbone to push for a full ban on no-knock warrants,” she said.

So far, federal efforts have sputtered

While the killings of Taylor and George Floyd in 2020 galvanized support for police reform, the resulting efforts to ban no-knocks on a national level have so far failed.

Even before any protests broke out in Louisville and before Breonna Taylor became a household name, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was saying no-knock warrants should be banned in the wake of her killing.

Then, on June 11, 2020 – the same day Louisville banned no-knocks with Breonna’s Law – Paul introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act.

The short bill would have prohibited federal law enforcement officers from executing no-knock warrants and would have barred state and local law enforcement agencies that receive federal funds from executing no-knock warrants.

Another piece of 2020 legislation, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, also pushed for a ban on no-knock warrants in federal drug cases.

That bill, introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., passed in the House, but stalled in the Senate.

The bill was reintroduced the following year, but faced the same fate.

Last year, Paul and Rep. Morgan McGarvey, Kentucky’s lone Democrat in Congress, unsuccessfully reintroduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act in the Senate and House.

McGarvey, who was a state senator in Kentucky when limits were placed on no-knocks, told The Courier Journal that he plans on reintroducing the legislation during the current Congress.

“I hope we can build on momentum of a bill that I introduced in the House, that he (Paul) introduced in the Senate, and get people to look at it for what it is: a bill that’s going to keep Americans safer,” he said.

In a statement to The Courier Journal, Paul said: “At its core, this legislation is about safety, for both law enforcement and citizens, which is something I think we can all agree is quite important, no matter your political affiliation.”

A spokesperson for Paul said the senator plans to reintroduce the legislation.

DeRay Mckesson, the executive director of Campaign Zero and a leader in the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri, protests, said he is hopeful there will be a national ban on no-knocks one day.

“It won’t be in these four years,” he told The Courier Journal. “But yeah, I’m hopeful. ... What we found in the legislative work is that when legislators understood search warrants, when they understood the difference between noknocks and knock-and-announces, this was actually an easy conversation to have.”

While legislation has not succeeded on the federal level, the U.S. Department of Justice in 2021 instituted a policy limiting the use of no-knock warrants to instances where safety is at stake and requiring both a prosecutor and the officer’s agency to sign off on them.

That policy was announced alongside a ban on chokeholds. However, those restrictions apply only to federal agents.

Mckesson said the DOJ directive was a positive step, but he fears it may not survive long under the Trump administration.

“We are hopeful that they don’t even know it exists,” he said.