For each of the past two nights, large protests have broken out on the streets of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, much as they have in cities across the country after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, a Black man, on Monday.

Unlike many of the other high-profile deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police that have generated similar protests, Taylor’s was not caught on film.

When police entered, Walker — who has said he never heard police announce their presence — fired a single shot that hit an officer in the leg.

But the president’s cynical (and racist) response should not obscure the essential truth: The demonstrations in Louisville, much like those in Minneapolis and other cities, are about much more than one death at the hands of police, or even a handful of them. .

Black Louisvillians have been protesting against police brutality for decades, and the anger and urgency on display this week has deeper roots ― in the city’s persistent segregation, its decades of economic neglect of Black communities, its long-standing lack of accountability for police and its refusal to do anything about any of it. .

“West Louisville,” Cosby said of the side of the city where most of its Black population lives, “is one of the most socially isolated, economically deprived communities in America.”.

In 2004, McKenzie Mattingly, a white Louisville metro police officer, killed Michael Newby, a Black teenager, after an undercover drug deal gone wrong.

It was the seventh police killing of a Black male in Louisville in a five-year span and sparked mass protests in the city.

The city nearly reached the sort of breaking point that happened instead, a decade later, in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer touched off protests that drew nationwide attention to police brutality and helped launch the Black Lives Matter movement.

When he tried to return to the Louisville police force years later, the chief told him he’d never work as a cop in the city again. .

The Newby killing gave Louisville an obvious chance to do something about the systemic and structural discrimination plaguing its city.  But while it held one officer semi-accountable, it did little to address the larger problems at hand.

But change has been slow, even as the city’s Black Lives Matter chapter joined the national movement in staging demonstrations against police brutality and other issues.

Activists have demanded better affordable housing policies, called for investment into West Louisville communities and asked for real reforms and oversight for police.

And white Louisvillians, like white Americans, have continued to demand a police force that protects them and their property from Black communities, rather than one that offers the same protection they receive to Black people too.

That has only intensified over the last decade, as Louisville has re-urbanized and gentrified communities white residents once fled.

Frustration has mounted in Black communities over continued police abuses and white Louisville’s refusal to listen, said Christopher 2X, whose Game Changers organization works with young Louisvillians in an effort to reduce violence.  .

“Everything he said today should have already happened, from the ‘no knock’ warrants to bringing the police department under civilian review,” said Terry Brown, a Louisville blogger and radio host whose father served on the city’s police force

“The easiest short term solution is to fire and arrest all those who were involved,” said Deonte Hollowell, an assistant professor of history and African American studies at Louisville’s Spalding University who studies police relationships with Black communities