JW Lucas, a white hip-hop producer who’s worked with rappers like DaBaby and Lil Uzi Vert, caught some fierce blowback after he said on Twitter this week that people shouldn’t be rallying for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was gunned down on March 13 in Louisville, Kentucky, by police officers who broke down her door during a botched drug raid.
Lucas was quickly slammed on social media for his opinion, and he also got into a heated exchange with well-known activist Tamika Mallory.
“Why is the world asking for justice for #Breonna Taylor,” Lucas tweeted Thursday, July 30, a post he has since been deleted. “Of course she shouldn’t have lost her life … but do you realize that she was involved with multiple drug dealers who were using her house as a trap spot? If you sign up for that life there are consequences.”
“It is terrible Breonna lost her life, and as I said earlier I believe the cops may have mishandled the raid and been to aggressive after being fired on,” he continued. “With that being said what is the punishment the world Is calling for. Those men were on the job and have families as well.”
Lucas also said that Taylor’s case is being “sensationalized” for political purposes during an election year.
It didn’t take long for people to tell him that he had his facts all wrong, because although police claimed in their warrant that Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was having drug packages sent to her home, there was no evidence to support that claim and no drugs were ever found in her apartment.
Before the shooting, officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department were investigating two men that they believed were selling drugs from a residence that wasn’t close to Taylor’s home at all.
The officers believed that one of those men, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was having drugs delivered to her apartment, and on that suspicion they obtained a no-knock warrant, which permitted them to enter her home without identifying themselves.
Taylor was sleeping with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker when police began battering down her apartment door. Believing the cops to be criminal intruders, Walker shot one of the officers in the leg as the door was breached. The three cops responded with a barrage of gunfire, hitting Taylor five times.
Walker was charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but those charges were dropped in May. Not one of the officers involved in the incident has been charged for Taylor’s death.
“JW Lucas actually amazes me how can you be in such a predominantly Black industry and still find any way you can to justify the killing or defend the killers of an unarmed SLEEPING Black woman?” someone tweeted about the music producer.
“#jwlucas is CANCELED in the BLACK community,” read another tweet.
“And y’all better not let up off #JWLucas for trying to justify the murder of #BreonnaTaylor Stay on him until it reaches the BLACK artists he works with,” a third person wrote.
Mallory, the activist who argued with Lucas about Taylor, has been a major part of protests since George Floyd died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May.
She was also one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March organization before stepping down because of the flap that arose over her attending an event where Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan made some inflammatory remarks about Jewish people.
“It’s extremely racist for a white man to try to tell Black people what we are doing, where we need to go, what our issues are,” Mallory told Lucas Thursday, July 30 on IG Live.
“I should be a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, because I’m more capable than you,” he shot back.
After the call for Lucas to be canceled grew louder, he apologized for stating false facts about Taylor and said he spoke to one of her siblings.
“I just had a conversation with breonnas sister,” he tweeted Thursday, July 30. “She informed me of the actual nature of the case and cleared up some things for me. I want to apologize to her and her family if my comment regarding her case had any potential inaccuracies … I also stated that based on the warrant and corroborated reports, that I was under the impression that her house was being used for receiving drug packs in the mail.”
“I am deleting my original tweet because of the potential inaccuracy that her house was being used to receive drug packs in the mail. If there was any corruption in the case the punishment should be the maximum allowed under law.”
