What are the riots demanding? Nothing beneficial to anyone.

The center pieces of most race outrage in recent years have just about all turned out to be flops.  Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd - all of them presented as good average joes who were turning their lives around and who were cut down in their prime.  

And then the real news begins to filter out, displacing the imaginary reporting done initially.  News of assaults and priors and rape and theft and violence against civilians and violence against police officers.  Each death a tragedy but each death seeming the culmination of bad choices and only marginally related to the police.  

There are malfeasant officers just as there are malfeasant employees in all large organizations.  You identify them, you retrain them or you weed them out.  

The death of Breonna Taylor seemed different.  The initial reporting had her as an innocent by-stander shot and killed during a botched no-knock police raid, seemingly on the wrong apartment.  We should regret and acknowledge the tragedy of any death but it is far easier to summon genuine regret when the victim is young, productive, and free from responsibility of the tragedy.  Taylor seemed to match that.

Additionally, many Americans, and certainly myself, are reasonably opposed to knock-warrants except under the most exceptional of circumstances.  In addition, many are concerned by the expansive application of qualified immunity whereby employees of the state are given carte blanche immunity for crimes most citizens would be imprisoned for.  Taylor's death seemed like it might have been the seed for reform on both those fronts.

Having parked Taylor in the truly needless tragedy category, I had not followed much since then.  Foolish me for dismissing the case based on my sympathy for the victim and my bias against no-knock warrants and qualified immunity.

Last week I saw warnings about the impending announcements as to whether charges would be brought against the police officers involved.  

We are a nation of laws, governed by the rule of law applied equally to all (ideally.)  A lot of the Mandarin Class chatter and talking heads seemed unmoored.  There were demands for prosecution with no argument for the basis of prosecution.  Curious, I went to the New York Times and discovered just how much I had overlooked based on the initial and, as it turned out, still unverified reporting.

From Breonna Taylor's Life Was Changing.  Then the Police Came to Her Door by Rukmini Callimachi.  The NYT clearly wants to make Taylor the innocent victim she was originally portrayed as but now they had a lot more factual reporting which made their argument far more . . . , well, let's say nuanced.

An ex-boyfriend’s run-ins with the law entangled her even as she tried to move on. Interviews, documents and jailhouse recordings help explain how she landed in the middle of a deadly drug raid.

Breonna Taylor had just done four overnight shifts at the hospital where she worked as an emergency room technician. To let off some steam, she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, planned a date night: dinner at a steakhouse, followed by a movie in bed.

Usually, they headed to his apartment, where he lived alone and she had left a toothbrush and a flat iron. But that night, they went to the small unit she shared with her younger sister, who was away on a trip. It was dark when the couple pulled into the parking lot, then closed the door to Apartment 4 behind them.

This was the year of big plans for the 26-year-old: Her home was brimming with the Post-it notes and envelopes on which she wrote her goals. She had just bought a new car. Next on the list: buying her own home. And trying to have a baby with Mr. Walker. They had already chosen a name.

She fell asleep next to him just after midnight on March 13, the movie still playing. “The last thing she said was, ‘Turn off the TV,’” he said in an interview.

That's pretty much in accord with the original reporting I recall.  But from there, it is one long explication of why the police believed it was warranted to raid her apartment.

It comes down to:

Taylor had a longstanding relationship with a felon involved in drug trafficking.  

Her apartment frequently received packages believed to contain drugs.

The drug dealing felon frequently visited her apartment. 

She frequently visited the boyfriend at has multiple drug houses.

She had a new boyfriend while still somewhat involved with the drug-dealing boyfriend.

None of that warrants her death.  But it provides a different context.  Further:

The raid was initially authorized as a no-knock raid but was later modified to require police identification.

While there is dispute about whether or how effectively the police identified themselves, there is also evidence that they did indeed announce their presence.

On entry, the first shot was fired in the dark by the new boyfriend under the impression that it might have been the dangerous former boyfriend breaking in.

The first officer was dangerously wounded and returned fire, prompting the other two officers to also fire.

Finally, the raids were large, deeply planned and very successful at the other locations.  Multiple arrests made at the various drug houses, multiple guns seized, large amounts of cash confiscated and drugs taken.  

So this was no careless event.  It was well-based on evidence, law, planning, and public policy (drug suppression.)  I think most of us have deep reservation about the War on Drugs; its ancillary casualties and its effectiveness.  But with 70,000 people a year dying of drug overdoses, I think everyone also agrees that there is a large and tragic problem, even if we do not, after all these years, yet know how to address it. 

Seeing the more complete picture from the NYT, it is hard to detect much in terms of systemic police failure above and beyond that associated with normal policing under dangerous circumstances.  Certainly no evidence of racial prejudice.  

The objective the police were pursuing was good public policy (reduce the carnage of drug overdoses).  The evidence was plentiful and amassed over weeks and months.  The raids were well-manned.  There was an evidentiary basis for raiding Taylor's apartment.  The police were fired upon first.  The police, other than one individual, followed department protocols.

It had a tragic outcome but it is hard to see that there was any carelessness or bad intent on the part of the police.  They failed to recognized that there was a relationship transition occurring with Taylor separating from the drug felon and increasingly associating with a man who appears to have been a good citizen.

They failed to recognize that Taylor and her new beau, contrary to past pattern, had that evening both returned to Taylor's apartment.  One officer, under fire and with a fellow officer down, lost discipline and fired randomly into the apartment without the target acquisition required.

This is not to argue that Taylor deserved to die or even that she contributed to her own death through a pattern of bad decisions.  This is to acknowledge that there can be bad outcomes without intent or maliciousness while pursuing good public policy.  

And that is the real issue here.  Not so much the merits of the police or Taylor.  But the question - what can or should have been done differently?  It is hard, knowing the more complete facts, to identify much.

This wasn't about no-knock warrants as I had originally understood.  This wasn't about qualified immunity as I suspected.  

So what are the protests about?  What systemic changes would makes this tragedy less likely to occur while still seeking to reduce the 70,000 drug overdoses each year?

In an article in today's NYT, the demands are articulated, emphasis added:

Ms. Taylor’s name and image have become part of the national movement over racial injustice since May, with celebrities writing open letters and erecting billboards that demanded the white officers be criminally charged. Ms. Palmer sued the city of Louisville for wrongful death and received a $12 million settlement last week. But she and her lawyers insisted that nothing short of murder charges would be enough, a demand taken up by protesters nationwide.

Ben Crump, a lawyer for the family, wrote on Twitter that the failure to charge any officer for killing Ms. Taylor was “outrageous and offensive.” Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, both Democrats, called on the attorney general, a Republican, to publish as much of the evidence as possible online so that the public could review it.

Murder charges?  On what basis?  We are all able to recognize that bad outcomes can occur without intent on any person's part.  

Many legal experts said before the charges were announced that indictments for killing Ms. Taylor would be unlikely, given the state’s statute allowing citizens to use lethal force in self-defense. John W. Stewart, a former assistant attorney general in Kentucky, said he believed that at least Sergeant Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove were protected by that law.

“As an African-American, as someone who has been victim of police misconduct myself, getting pulled over and profiled, I know how people feel,” Mr. Stewart said. “I have been there, but I have also been a prosecutor, and emotions cannot play a part here.”

The law in Kentucky allows an occupant to defend themselves from intruders so the boyfriend is in the clear.  The law requires officers to obey orders and follow procedures which they appear to have done.  Both parties are innocent before the law and yet Breonna Taylor is tragically dead.

There is a limit to human perfection.  There is a limit to human effectiveness.  There is a limit to human understanding.  There is a limit to the efficacy of the law.

What the demonstrators appear to be demanding is simply mob justice.  "We want an outcome different from what the law allows" seems to be the demand.  

No reform, no policy trade-off decisions (for example abandoning the war of drugs), no change in the law.  Simply brute demands for mob action. 

And it is horrifying how many in the Pandering Class are trading in this nonsense.  Improve the law, improve police procedure and training, change public policy - by all means.  But simply demand that we ignore rights and law?  

No way.