Even though this isn’t the justice we have been looking for in Breonna Taylor’s death, at least the Lousiville Metro Police Department has finally fired two officers involved in the botched raid that resulted in her death.
According to a letter from Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Yvette Gentry, detectives Joshua Jaynes and Myles Cosgrove learned last week that the department planned to fire them. As of Tuesday, their termination was made official.
The chief said that Cosgrove was terminated because he violated standard operating procedures for deadly force and failed to activate his body camera. Jaynes was terminated for two departmental violations tied to securing the search warrant for the deadly March 13 raid.
In September, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Cosgrove was the detective who fired the shot that killed Taylor.
Although Jaynes was not at Taylor’s apartment when gunfire erupted, he was the one who secured the search warrant that led to the deadly confrontation.
Jaynes’ attorney Thomas Clay said his client would appeal to a city board that reviews police terminations.
On Wednesday, Clay told NBC News that his client was “being made a scapegoat,” saying that the March 13 raid was “fully briefed” to the highest levels of the police department before it happened. He said, “There is a culpability, if there is any culpability, it goes to the highest levels of Louisville metro government. He did nothing wrong. Joshua Jaynes did nothing wrong.”
A lawyer for Cosgrove and representatives from the police union could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.
The deaths of Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd while he was in Minneapolis police custody, and the initial decisions not to charge the individuals involved in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Georgia, fueled a summer of international protests against systemic racism.
Despite the outcry against Taylor’s shooting, no criminal charges were brought in her death.
Instead, former Louisville police Det. Brett Hankison, who was fired in June, was charged for allegedly firing blindly into an apartment and recklessly endangering Taylor’s neighbors.
