Two cops to be fired over Breonna Taylor killing: Louisville police to remove detective who obtained no-knock warrant - and second officer who shot the EMT three times
Louisville police have taken steps that could result in the firing of two detectives connected to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor at her apartment earlier this year.
Detective Joshua Jaynes - who obtained the no-knock warrant on Taylor's home - and Detective Myles Cosgrove - one of the officers who shot her - have received pretermination letters, media outlets reported on Tuesday.
Jaynes, who was not present at the shooting, received the letter after a Professional Standards Unit investigation found he had violated department procedures for preparation of a search warrant and truthfulness, his attorney said. The fatal shooting of the 26-year-old black woman in her home sparked months of protests in Louisville alongside national protests over racial injustice and police misconduct.
No officers face charges in relation to Taylor's killing. One of the officrs involved, Brett Hankison faces a charge of wanton endangerment for firing recklessly into a neighboring apartment. He has pleaded not guilty, and has since been fired.
Detectives Joshua Jaynes and Myles Cosgrove, who was one of the officers who shot Breonna Taylor, received pretermination letters, media outlets reported on Tuesday
The officers were serving a narcotics warrant on March 13 when they shot Taylor, but no drugs or cash were found in her home
Cosgrove shot Taylor at least three times, killing her, according to an FBI ballistics analysis. He was the second person to enter her home and fired 16 rounds down the hallway
Jaynes has a hearing with interim Chief Yvette Gentry and her staff on Thursday.
'Detective Jaynes and I will show up for the pretermination hearing to try to convince acting Chief Gentry that this action is unwarranted,' attorney Thomas Clay told the Courier Journal.
'Jaynes did nothing wrong,' Clay added.
Jaynes was not present during the shooting at Taylor's apartment in Louisville. About 12 hours earlier, he secured a warrant with a 'no-knock' clause from a judge.
Gentry wrote: 'These are extreme violations of our policies, which endangered others.
'Your actions have brought discredit upon yourself and the department. Your conduct has severely damaged the image our department has established within our community.'
The officers were serving a narcotics warrant on March 13 when they shot Taylor, but no drugs or cash were found in her home.
Cosgrove shot Taylor at least three times, killing her, according to an FBI ballistics analysis. He was the second person to enter her home and fired 16 rounds down the hallway.
Taylor was an emergency medical worker who had settled in for the night when police busted through her door.
Former officer Brett Hankison was charged by a grand jury with wanton endangerment, a low-level felony, for firing into an adjacent apartment where people were present.
Cosgrove and Officer John Mattingly who shot Taylor, according to ballistics evidence, were not charged by the grand jury.
Mattingly was shot by Taylor's boyfriend during the raid and returned fire. Taylor's boyfriend said he thought an intruder was breaking into her apartment.
After the grand jury decision, three jurors came forward to reveal that they believe the investigation was incomplete.
One woman, who came forward last month, spoke anonymously about the September proceedings, joining two others who said the 12-member panel was not given the option to consider charges against the officers who fatally shot Taylor in March.
The woman, in her first published interview, said that when the proceedings concluded with three wanton endangerment charges for one officer, she felt herself saying 'no, that's not the end of it'.
'I felt like there should've been more charges,' she said in a phone interview. She echoed two other grand jurors' complaints that the panel wasn't allowed to consider additional charges because prosecutors told them the use of force was justified.
Former officer Brett Hankison (left) was charged by the grand jury with three counts of wanton endangerment. The other officer John Mattingly (right), was not charged
The two officers who shot Taylor, according to ballistics evidence, were not charged by the grand jury. One of those officers was shot by Taylor's boyfriend (left) during the raid and returned fire. Taylor's boyfriend said he thought an intruder was breaking into her apartment
The woman on the grand jury said she didn't understand why prosecutors didn't consider endangerment charges against Mattingly and Cosgrove.
'All of them went in blindly, you really couldn't see into that lady's apartment as they explained to us, there was just a TV on,' she said of Taylor's apartment. The police 'went in there like the O.K. Corral, wanted dead or alive'.
After a year marked by police killings of black men and women and mass civil unrest over racial injustice, some activists have started taking aim at police tactics that can lead to deadly middle-of-the-night raids they say are used overwhelmingly in communities of color.
Rather than waiting for direction from lawmakers, a group of academics, policing experts and activists called Campaign Zero has created model legislation around so-called no-knock warrants they hope will be attractive to cities, states and President-elect Joe Biden, as they work to curtail police tactics that lead to both civilian and officer casualties.
While Biden has said his administration will support criminal justice reforms, it's unclear where he will focus.
SWAT team and tactical drug raids - in which heavily armed police teams bust down doors - have ballooned from about 3,000 in the early 1980s to more than 60,000 annually in the last few years, mostly because of drugs and drug task forces, according to Peter Kraska, a criminology professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has studied police raids for decades.
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