The mother of Breonna Taylor has taken out a full-page ad in The Washington Post calling for President-elect Joe Biden to order a full investigation into the death of her daughter and other incidents in which police killed Black people.
"Actions speak louder than words," Tamika Palmer wrote in the ad, which was placed in Tuesday’s edition of the newspaper, and is now available from the Grassroots Law Project. "We need your actions to show that you are different than those who pay lip service to our losses while doing nothing to show that our loved ones' lives mattered."
Her daughter, 26, died last March after she was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police officers who were executing a no-knock search warrant at her apartment in Kentucky, who were not charged in Taylor’s killing.
Palmer added that Biden’s "stated commitment to prioritize police accountability" is what drove people to vote for him, and that those supporters now want to see action.
“For many Americans, a vote for you was a vote for Breonna, Jacob Blake, Casey Goodson and so many others who have been failed repeatedly by the criminal justice system under the current administration,” she wrote. “These victims could not vote for you – so millions of us did so on their behalf.”
Palmer concluded: “We fought for you. It is now your turn to fight for us.”