In the aftermath of announcement that three police officers involved in killing Louisville resident Breonna Taylor would not face state murder charges for her death, the taxpayer-funded PBS NewsHour went right to a liberal legal analyst from the stridently left-wing MSNBC as their only guest to react to the case.
Interviewed by PBS correspondent Amna Nawaz, the far-left Butler preposterously likened the three cops involved in the raid to "gang bangers" breaking into an innocent person's home and killing them, and declared that they should similarly face murder charges:
AMNA NAWAZ: The fact that the only criminal charges to come out of the investigation and out of the grand jury are not related to Breonna Taylor's death at all -- what is your reaction to that?
PAUL BUTLER: I think homicide charges against all three officers would have been appropriate. Imagine if three gang members had broken into a house in the middle of the night, and were met by a gun used by the home owner, a legal gun, in self-defense, and, in response, the gang bangers shot up the whole complex. I think that those gang bangers would be prosecuted for murder or manslaughter. I think when police officers do the same thing, it's still a crime.
Nawaz did not bother to point out the obvious that, unlike gang members, police officers have a legal justification for forcing their way into a suspect's home as long as they have a legally obtained search warrant.
It was also not mentioned that investigators had reason to believe Taylor was assisting her ex-boyfriend who was arrested for drug dealing.
As the segment concluded, Nawaz cued up her liberal guest to blame racism for the decision not to charge the officers for killing Taylor. The PBS correspondent asked: "What would you say to the many people out there who say this is another example of black Americans who are disproportionately affected by violence from police officers not getting justice?"
Butler took her up on the suggestion as he responded:
I would say that they're exactly right. What the Kentucky prosecutors said today is that when three police officers barge into your house in the middle of the night and shoot you six times, that's not a crime. I think that that's a legal prosecutorial way of saying black lives don't matter. Sometimes the problem is systemic -- this isn't a systemic issue -- this is a problem of bad apple cops. You don't need reform -- it's against the law to do what they did, in my opinion, and yet these officers are now above the law.
Butler has notably been one of the more stridently liberal analysts on MSNBC. Last year, after it was pretty well confirmed that actor Jussie Smollett had staged a hate crime against himself, the MSNBC liberal clung to defending him and suggested the Chicago police were lying.
He has also incorrectly claimed that most police killing victims are minorities.
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PS: CNN/PBS host Christiane Amanpour was also slamming the Louisville police shooters on her show during an interview with former police chief Charles Ramsey, who noted the police were firing in self-defense:
RAMSEY: I do know that once the officers were fired upon, they had every right to return fire. The question is, was it proportional? And that's a hard question to answer.
AMANPOUR: Well, it's not hard. It's not hard. I mean, I think everybody knows that 32 bullets in response to one is -- we can't even understand it. I mean, here's what W. Kamau Bell -- let me just, let me just read this to you and you can continue. W. Kamau Bell -- who has a program on CNN called the United Shades of America and does many other things in the public domain, has tweeted: "Brett Hankison was indicted for shooting into the apartment NEXT to Breonna Taylor and not for KILLING HER. He's fired for shooting into BREONNA TAYLOR's apartment & not for KILLING HER. This is systemic racism. Property is worth more than a Black woman."
