In addition to putting the police on alert, federal buildings in the city have been closed for the week. Their windows were covered in plywood and cement barriers and chain-link fences are being put up as well. Some observers believe that’s a hint which way the case is going:

Late Monday morning behind Louisville City Hall, heavy equipment unloaded concrete barriers to be deployed to city streets. Less than a block away, chain-link fencing was erected on a sidewalk to control what could be large crowds of angry people…

“It’s like when you see these little subliminal things going on, it’s a direct indication to what the decision is going to be,” Aaron Jordan, the founder of Black Complex Louisville, said. “Right now, a lot of us are pissed off. A lot of us are angry. A lot of us are sad, and a lot of people just don’t know what to feel.”

Protesters and family members have demanded no less than manslaughter charges against all three LMPD officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor. Anything less is expected to be met with a strong reaction.

CNN adds that a request for help protecting four federal buildings in Louisville was made last week:

Last Thursday, US Attorney Russell Coleman asked the Department of Homeland Security to provide protection for four federal buildings in downtown Louisville.

Jean Porter, director of communications for Mayor Greg Fischer, told CNN the Federal Protective Service or FPS, which is a branch of DHS, was asked by the US Attorney to come to Louisville to protect the Snyder Courthouse, Mazzoli Building, US Attorney’s Office and an ICE office that are adjacent to each other.

Last week the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Taylor’s family for several million dollars (I’ve seen the figure put at $12 million). As Jazz suggested at the time, that doesn’t necessarily mean any of the officers involved will be charged but if they are it could look like a pretty big admission of fault to jurors. We’ll likely know what the grand jury decides in the next few days.

Meanwhile, Louisville set a new milestone for murders over the weekend after four people were fatally shot.

The four deaths overnight brought this year’s criminal homicide count to 121, according to a Courier Journal review of LMPD data. The Courier Journal reached out to the Louisville Metro Police Department to confirm that total, but an LMPD spokesperson didn’t respond

Louisville’s previous record for murders was reported in 2016, when LMPD investigated 117 homicides.

The triple-homicide which took place Friday night is generating a lot of speculation about what the motive might be. Police say suspect Michael Rhynes didn’t know the victims at all and had no prior conflicts with them. The shooting at this point appears to be totally random and unprovoked:

Louisville Metro Police Department Lt. Donny Burbrink has “heard the same thing everybody else has heard” about the suspect in the triple homicide Friday night at Bungalow Joe’s Bar and Grill, but he’s not ready to put a label on the case.

“We’re exploring all options at this point, and I don’t think that we want to pigeonhole ourselves and say that this is a hate crime or that this is racially motivated,” the leader of LMPD’s Homicide Unit said Monday afternoon.

“We don’t have any evidence to say that at this point, and I don’t want to fuel that fire by saying something that we do not have definitive proof that actually happened.”…

Rhynes, who has no violent criminal history prior to Friday’s shootings, was wearing a shirt that said “#Freedom,” Burbrink said Monday, and included an image of the faces of Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick.

Of course it’s possible this was someone with mental problems or drug problems but in the current environment the suspicion that there might be some political motive involved probably occurs to everyone. But again, at this point, police don’t have proof that’s the case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBOceCrExVE