Louisville Police Board Denies Ex-Officer Who Shot Breonna Taylor Chance At Getting Job Back
In a 5-2 vote, the Police Merit Board voted on Wednesday (Dec. 15) not to allow one of the terminated officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor back in the Louisville Metro Police Department, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.
Former detective Myles Cosgrove fired 16 rounds into the Black woman’s apartment on March 13, 2020. He was fired from the department in January for failing to “properly identify a target.”
Cosgrove is the second officer involved in the Taylor case to appeal his termination to the board, which previously upheld the firing of Joshua Jaynes who lied to obtain a warrant for the botched raid.
An internal investigation conducted by the LMPD determined that the three officers involved in the shooting, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Cosgrove, should not have fired into Taylor’s apartment.
According to an FBI ballistics report, Cosgrove fired the shot that killed Taylor while Hankison, standing outside of the apartment door, fired ten rounds into the apartment through a patio door with drawn blinds.
In documents obtained by ABC News, the department’s Professional Standards Unit determined that the three officers should have held their fire after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot, believing intruders had broken into their home.
Hankison, who also was fired from the LMPD, was the only officer charged for his actions after it was found that he fired three shots into a wall that connected to the adjacent apartment. He was charged with wanton endangerment and pleaded not guilty.
In September of 2020, Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron announced that a grand jury declined to indict any officer in Taylor’s death.
