Wrong answer for $10, Mayor | Thorn
The search for a police chief has begun. Mayor Greg Fischer was asked whether the next chief should be a Black person. He said: “I feel the next police chief has got to be the best person for the job.” He might as well have said: “All chiefs matter.”
Confusion over collusion | Thorn
Finally, more than a week after The Courier Journal ran the story online, it published in its print edition, “‘Rogue’ unit or targeted initiative? Why police’s new place-based squad is causing a stir.” The story centers on the allegation that the police worked with city agencies to target people and houses on Elliott Avenue to make way for redevelopment and, some say, gentrification. That targeting, it is alleged, led to the night when police killed Breonna Taylor ostensibly while trying to break a drug dealing ring led by a man living on Elliott Avenue. In a CJ op-ed, the interim police chief denied that the city directed police to focus on Elliott Avenue to take the property. Most interesting from the story: After the city told the landlord that his house could be deemed a “public nuisance” due to drug activity there, he asked about donating it to the city. The story then says: “After speaking with [the landlord] by phone Feb. 17, a code enforcement officer wrote in an email to all five police officers of the PBI [Place-Based Investigations] unit that if further illegal activity occurs, ‘he will then donate the property to Metro after evicting the tenant.’” Police then raided the house as part of the operation that resulted in Taylor’s death. The landlord sold the house to the city for $1. What a coincidence! So... the police report criminal activity at the house, the city moves against the landlord and he gives up the house. And police say they are not an arm of city redevelopment plans?
WAVE3 — if it misleads, it leads | Thorn
A thorn goes to WAVE3 News for a story about a grandmother who wants “Black Lives Matter to Hazlewood Hawks” removed from an outdoor sign at her grandkids’ school. The online version says it is a “Top Story” for the station. Lame. Why is this a story at all? What about: Grandmother thinks extraterrestrials live in her ass...? Is that a story? Worse, WAVE has provided a platform for this person to spew racist bullshit.
Rapper, a chicken wingman | Absurd
Kentucky is the Florida man of states. We are in the national news for all the wrong reasons. Most recently, it was after Louisville rapper Jack Harlow posted an Instagram photo that outed Los Angeles Clippers player Lou Williams for going to an Atlanta strip club when he was supposed to be COVID-19-isolating. Harlow claimed the photo was an old one, but Williams admitted he went to the strip club to pick up chicken wings while he was allowed outside of the NBA bubble for a funeral.
