LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Referring to George Floyd’s death as a murder, Sen. Rand Paul spoke out Tuesday against no-knock search warrants and the militarization of police departments during a conversation with activists seeking answers for the shooting death of a black woman by Louisville police.
During the discussion, Paul lamented that police officers sometimes follow bad policies. And in cases of police abuse, the bar for firing offending officers should be low, he said.
The Kentucky lawmaker, who has worked with Democrats in pressing for criminal-justice reform, said he’s likely to support some form of federal legislation aimed at overhauling police procedures.
Paul spoke with an aunt of Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home in March. The 26-year-old EMT was shot eight times by narcotics detectives who knocked down her front door while attempting to enforce a search warrant. No drugs were found in the home.
“I want to make sure that we don’t forget Breonna,” he said. “That we try to make it better, so this doesn’t happen again.”
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“With the Floyd murder ... we need to have policies saying we shouldn’t have a knee on someone’s neck,” he said. “And then it’s the individual doing that for eight minutes. So there’s the individual problem but there’s the policy problem.”
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Paul reiterated his criticism of no-knock search warrants, which allow officers to enter a home without announcing their presence.
“I think it’s crazy that we’re breaking down people’s doors in the middle of the night,” he said. “People are frightened. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know if it’s burglars.”
During the discussion with the Kentucky activists, Paul also spoke out against selling military equipment to police departments -- something he’s tried to block for years.
“I don’t think we need bayonets and tanks in our streets,” he said. “I think it sends a wrong message and it’s not really what our country’s about.”
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