Breonna Taylor’s Family Receives $12 Million Settlement From Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After months of protests that turned Breonna Taylor’s name into a national slogan against police violence, city officials agreed to pay her family $12 million and institute changes aimed at preventing future deaths by officers.

The agreement, announced Tuesday, settled a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the young woman’s family. As her mother, her lawyers and leading activists walked into the council chamber alongside the mayor, there was a momentary show of unity, after months of nightly, sometimes violent demonstrations that have left Kentucky’s largest city boarded up. It comes six months after the death of Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, in a botched drug raid, but before the state’s attorney general has said whether the officers involved in the shooting would be criminally charged — a key demand of protesters.

“My administration is not waiting to move ahead with needed reforms to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again,” Mayor Greg Fischer said. “When you know what the right thing to do is you do it. Why wait?”

The agreement, which did not require the city to acknowledge wrongdoing, was sizable, with her family receiving more than double the amount paid to the relatives of Eric Garner, the New York man who died in a police chokehold in 2014. While a few similar cases resulted in larger payments — from $13 million to a whopping $38 million, some of them came only after years in court battles. By contrast, the Louisville agreement was reached in just months.