More than 100 people, many of them Murray State University students, marched on the university’s campus Friday evening to call for policing reform and racial justice. The protest follows a grand jury’s decision earlier this week not to charge Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers with Breonna Taylor’s death.
Protesters carrying signs with phrases including, “Breonna, I’m so, so sorry,” and, “White Silence is Violence,” began marching near the university football stadium and made their way past the dining hall, with nearly everyone wearing masks.
Lupita Salazar, a sophomore student from Illinois at the march, stood outside the university’s student center holding a flag with the phrase, “Black Lives Matter,” for two straight days following Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s announcement of the indictment in the Breonna Taylor case.
“I was pissed. So I grabbed my flag and I went out in front of the Curris Center. And I was like, ‘I’m so mad. I need to show the world how mad I am about it,’” Salazar said. “It shows people that this is what I stand for and I’m not going to back down because you don’t like what I’m saying.”
For another Murray State student at the march, the indictment and fallout from the Breonna Taylor case was personal. Naya Taylor, 21, is a Black woman from Louisville, where law enforcement arrested more than 100 in a single night during protests following the indictment.
“Just to see the city I thought was perfect I guess, just to see it go downhill,” Taylor said. “It is traumatic because honestly, I never would have thought it would have happened there.”
Taylor said she believes the indictment in the Breonna Taylor case wasn’t the justice people were looking for, and that she wanted “actual justice” and not a “cop out method” in arresting the one Louisville officer.
Former LMPD Detective Brett Hankison was indicted on three counts of wanton endangerment -- class D felonies -- when he fired his gun into neighboring apartments. None of the charges were for shots fired directly into Breonna Taylor’s apartment or linked to her death.
The grand jury in its indictment didn’t indicate whether they considered charges against Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly, two other officers who fired their weapons during the raid.
The march at MSU was originally organized on social media by the Murray State College Democrats, and the vice president of the student organization says the march demands justice for Breonna Taylor after the indictment fell short, even if the case is far away from rural western Kentucky.
“We are a red county, and a lot of the people are not totally aware of everything that’s going on,” Megan Reynolds said. “So, the significance of having it here is, we are making sure that they know that even here, in a red county, we’re not standing for anything that’s going. We are here to raise our voices.”
The march eventually reached the dormitories on campus, with the crowd stopping by Elizabeth Hall to hear various people from the crowd speak, including Shannon Davis-Roberts, the Democratic candidate running for the 5th District State House Representative seat this fall.
“I am living proof that anyone here can run for office. And let me tell you [Attorney General Daniel] Cameron, Mr. Cameron, and all the public servants who aren’t doing their job, we are coming for jobs,” Davis-Roberts said.
Several of the speakers talked about their personal experiences facing fear with law enforcement encounters, while others spoke about grappling with their white privilege. Three men holding a flag representing the “Blue Lives Matter” movement stood across from the crowd as people spoke to the crowd.
The crowd thinned as the night wore on, with eventually 30 protesters deciding to march through quiet residential blocks to the Calloway County courthouse. The protesters were met with a handful of people looking to protect the Confederate monument on courthouse grounds. Protests calling for removal of the monument have been ongoing for months.
What began as loud chanting by protesters at the monument turned into a dialogue and debate about the Breonna Taylor case, police training, and statistics of those killed by the police between protesters who marched to the monument and those who stood by the monument.
Asia Blanton, a Murray State sophomore who’s lived in Murray throughout her childhood, was one of the protesters by the monument. She said the prospect of Attorney General Daniel Cameron conducting an investigation involving law enforcement in Murray, as he had for Louisville police in Taylor’s case, is scary for her.
"The police officers can do whatever they want. They are not that way in Murray, thankfully. But if they were, the attorney general would side with them, and that’s really frightening,” Blanton said. “It’s really scary every time I hear sirens, I’m just worried. Like, is somebody going to be OK? Is this the time that Murray is going to be on the news?”
Murray State University Police Department officers followed the protest throughout the march around campus, and Murray Police Department officers monitored the protest at the county courthouse.
