The city of Louisville, Kentucky, on Wednesday fired Detective Myles Cosgrove, a police officer who fired into the home of Breonna Taylor during a raid that resulted in her death, and Detective Joshua Jaynes, who sought the warrant that led to the flawed raid.
Officer Brett Hankison was fired in September after a grand jury indicted him on charges of endangering Taylor’s neighbors by shooting through a nearby apartment’s windows.
Each of the officers are white.
Taylor, a Black woman, was in bed sleeping next to her boyfriend when the officers attempted to serve a no-knock search warrant on March 13. Officers falsely tied Taylor to a former boyfriend’s alleged drug activities because they claimed that the man had used Taylor’s address, making the house fair game for a police raid.
After the grand jury failed to indict the officers, a defiant Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron maintained his desire to keep secret the recording of the grand jury proceedings in Taylor’s case despite a judge’s order to release them.
Judge Ann Bailey Smith ruled that the recording and all discovery documents cannot be shared merely between the parties.
Smith set Sept. 30 as the date that she will release the recordings.
Taylor, a 26-year-old former EMT worker, was shot at least a half-dozen times when officers breached her apartment to serve the erroneous warrant.
One member of the grand juror member argued that Cameron “attempted to make very clear that the grand jury alone made the decision alone on who and what to charge.”
The anonymous juror added that “the only exception to the responsibility he foisted upon the grand jurors was in his statement that they ‘agreed’ with his team’s investigation that Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and officer Myles Cosgrove were justified in their actions.”
“It’s a compelling public interest for these proceedings to be released,” the juror continued in court filings. “The citizens of this Commonwealth have demonstrated their lack of faith in the process and proceedings in this matter and the justice system itself. Using the grand jurors as a shield to deflect accountability and responsibility for these decisions only sow more seeds of doubt in the process while leaving a cold chill down the spines of future grand jurors.”
The firings were announced as the city named former Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields to head Louisville’s department.