Photo courtesy by Fox News.
Former police officer Myles Cosgrove filed an appeal for his job back in the Louisville Police Department after firing 16 rounds into Taylor’s apartment, which killed her in March 2020.
According to USA Today, former Louisville interim Police Chief Yvette Gentry determined that Cosgrove violated department procedures when he failed to correctly utilize his body camera during the search. He also failed to “properly identify a target” during a botched drug bust that fatally killed Taylor.
Cosgrove and his attorney held a predetermination hearing with Gentry, but their arguments did not change her decision.
“I considered the information you provided at our meeting concerning ‘force science,’ that is, the effect of serious physical threat on an officer’s performance,” Gentry wrote to Cosgrove. “However, despite your years of service, I cannot justify your conduct nor in good conscience recommend anything less than termination.”
Cosgrove was terminated on Jan. 5. He is appealing with the Louisville Metro Police Merit Board to return to the police department. At the end of the month, Cosgrove, along with his legal team, will have five days to put forth a compelling argument as to why he deserves his job back on the force.
The Louisville Metro Police Department conducted an internal investigation. It concluded that three officers involved, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, “should not have fired shots into her apartment in the fatal botched raid.”
In documents obtained by ABC News, Sgt. Andrew Meyer of the police department’s Professional Standards Unit determined that the three officers were not permitted to shoot rounds into the apartment after Taylor’s Boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot one of them – mistaking the officers for intruders in the home.
“They took a total of thirty-two shots when the provided circumstances made it unsafe to take a single shot. This is how the wrong person was shot and killed,” Meyer wrote, according to the report.
According to an FBI ballistics report, Cosgrove fired the fatal shot that killed Taylor while Hankison stood outside the apartment and fired ten rounds through a patio door with blinds drawn.
The grand jury in the case charged Hankinson with three counts of wanton endangerment for firing rounds into a wall of an adjacent apartment from Taylor’s. While Hankinson was fired from the LPD and the only officer charged for his reckless actions, he pleaded not guilty.
In September 2020, Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron announced that the grand jury declined to indict the officers in Taylor’s death.
Mattingly, who was struck in the leg by Walker’s shot, was not fired and also made an appearance in October 2020 in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America. He said when officers approached the apartment, they knocked a total of six times and loudly identified themselves.
“So we get up, I remember banging on the door, it’s open hand, hard smack, bam, bam, bam, bam. First time, I didn’t announce. Just hoping she would come to the door,” Mattingly said.
He said the second time, they banged on the door and announced, “Police, search warrant.”
Walker disagreed with Mattingly and the narrative that was portrayed during the interview. He made his appearance in an interview with CBS This Morning, in which he stated that no police officer announced themselves before the search happened.
“If it was the police at the door and they just said ‘we’re the police,’ me or Breonna didn’t have a reason at all not to open the door and see what they wanted,” said Walker.
“During the no-knock warrant raid, the suspect police were looking for, Jamarcus Glover, was already in custody.”