Two Louisville police officers connected to the raid on Breonna Taylor’s apartment last year have officially been fired from the force, a spokesperson for the Louisville Metro Police Department confirmed Wednesday.
via NPR:
The termination letters, signed by interim police chief Yvette Gentry, said Detective Joshua Jaynes, who secured the warrant for the March 13 raid on Taylor’s home, and Detective Myles Cosgrove, who federal investigators said fired the fatal shot that killed Taylor, were dismissed from the force as of Tuesday.
Each has 10 days to appeal the police department’s decision.
The announcement of the terminations comes the same day Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer formally announcedthe hiring of Erika Shields, who previously led the Atlanta Police Department, as LMPD’s next police chief.
She is slated to be sworn in as Louisville’s top cop on January 19.
Both Cosgrove and Jaynes have been on paid leave in the months since the shooting and in late December received notification from Gentry that LMPD intended to sever their employment.
Earlier this week a lawyer for Jaynes told Louisville NPR member station WFPL his client’s dismissal from LMPD would not come as a surprise.
“I think the outcome [has] already been pre-determined,” Thomas Clay said to WFPL. “I think Detective Jaynes is going to be terminated. And we’re prepared to do what needs to be done in order to appeal that decision.”
Jaynes is accused of providing false information in the search warrant application, the Louisville Courier Journalhas reported.
In a separate report last week, the paper noted that Cosgrove did not identify a specific target as he fired more than a dozen rounds in Taylor’s apartment during the overnight raid, according to a pre-termination letter from LMPD that the Courier Journal obtained.
The letter also found that Cosgrove violated the department’s use-of-force protocols as well as failed to use his body camera, according to the paper.
None of the officers who discharged their service weapons during the raid faces criminal charges for Taylor’s death.
Firing is the bare minimum that should’ve happened to these officers a long time ago.
