2 Louisville Police Officers Involved In Breonna Taylor Raid Face Possible Firing

Two more officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department involved in the raid that led to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor are reportedly facing possible termination from their jobs.  

Detective Joshua Jaynes, who prepared the search warrant for the raid, and Detective Myles Cosgrove, who was among the officers who shot at Taylor, received pretermination letters from Acting Police Chief Yvette Gentry on Tuesday, the officers’ attorneys told The Courier-Journal.

Neither Jaynes nor Cosgrove has yet to be officially fired, according to The Courier-Journal. Jaynes reportedly has a closed hearing with Gentry on Thursday, during which he’ll be given an opportunity to fight for his job.

“Detective Jaynes and I will show up for the pretermination hearing to try to convince acting Chief Gentry that this action is unwarranted,” Jaynes’ lawyer, Thomas Clay, told The Courier-Journal. “Jaynes did nothing wrong.”

The New York Times, citing Gentry’s letter to Jaynes, said the officer was facing termination for lying and violating the department’s policies on search warrants.

The contents of Cosgrove’s letter have not been made public.

It’s also unclear whether or when Cosgrove will meet with Gentry to make his case. The Louisville Metro Police Department has not responded to HuffPost’s request for comment. 

Cosgrove was among a group of officers who forced their way into Taylor’s apartment in the early hours of March 13 as part of a narcotics investigation involving Taylor’s former boyfriend. In total, three officers — Cosgrove, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Brett Hankison — fired 32 bullets into Taylor’s home and neighboring units.

Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician, was shot six times and died in her hallway. The FBI later determined that Cosgrove had fired the fatal shot.

Of all the officers involved in Taylor’s shooting, only one has been fired and charged with a crime. 

Hankison was fired by the police department in June for “wantonly and blindly” firing 10 bullets into Taylor’s apartment. He was later charged by a grand jury with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment. Mattingly and Cosgrove faced no charges.

Jaynes, who was not present at the time of the raid but wrote the sworn affidavit that sought a judge’s permission to search Taylor’s home, has come under scrutiny for allegedly lying in the document.  

Jaynes said in the affidavit that a drug suspect had been receiving potentially suspicious packages at Taylor’s home ― despite the fact that his colleagues at the Louisville police department were told “repeatedly” by the Shively Police Department that no suspicious packages had been sent there. Shively officers said they confirmed this fact with a U.S. postal inspector. 

In her pretermination letter to Jaynes, Gentry said a Professional Standards Unit investigation had determined that Jaynes had lied in the affidavit and had committed “extreme violations of our policies, which endangered others.”

“Your actions have brought discredit upon yourself and the department,” she wrote in the letter. “Your conduct has severely damaged the image our department has established within our community.”

Police never found any drugs in Taylor’s apartment. Her former boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, who was being investigated by police, said Taylor had never been involved in the drug trade. 

“There was nothing never there or anything ever there, and at the end of the day, they went about it the wrong way and lied on that search warrant and shot that girl out there,” he told The Courier-Journal in August.