A floor mural depicting a photo of Breonna Taylor is seen in Chambers Park in Annapolis, Md., on July 6, 2020.
Julio Cortez/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Julio Cortez/AP
A floor mural depicting a photo of Breonna Taylor is seen in Chambers Park in Annapolis, Md., on July 6, 2020.
Julio Cortez/AP
Myles Cosgrove, a former Louisville police officer who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in March 2020, has become a law enforcement officer in a nearby county again, according to several local media outlets.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, located about an hour’s drive northeast of Louisville, recently hired Cosgrove, Chief Deputy Rob Miller said. The Courier Journal on Saturday.
“We think it will help reduce the flow of drugs into our area and reduce property crimes,” Miller said. “We felt he was a good candidate to help us in our county.”
This photo released by Louisville Police shows Louisville Police Det. Myles Cosgrove following a narcotics raid on 13 March 2020.
Louisville Police/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Louisville Police/AP
This photo released by Louisville Police shows Louisville Police Det. Myles Cosgrove following a narcotics raid on 13 March 2020.
Louisville Police/AP
Miller added that Cosgrove had almost two decades of experience in the police force. The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office declined NPR’s request for comment.
The hiring has drawn scrutiny in both Louisville and Carroll County.
Chanelle Helm, lead organizer of Black Lives Matter Louisville, said Cosgrove’s return to the police force showed the impunity often afforded to law enforcement.
“The way in which he can go and get a job in the same field should be illegal. For a typical citizen, we cannot re-enter certain fields, if we are fired from them. That carries with you,” she told the member station WFPL.
Cosgrove was one of seven officers involved in the deadly raid inside Taylor’s apartment in the middle of the night. Police, arriving to serve a no-knock search warrant, moved in — pulling out Taylor, a 26-year-old ER technician, and her boyfriend. Believing the officers were intruders, Taylor’s boyfriend fired one shot at them. The officers returned 32 shots, half of which were fired by Cosgrove. Two of his rounds hit Taylor.
An FBI ballistics report later showed that it was Cosgrove’s bullets that killed her, according to WFPL.
In January 2021, the Louisville Metro Police Department fired Cosgrove for violating the department’s procedures on the use of deadly force by failing to properly identify a threat when he fired his weapon. Cosgrove also violated LMPD policy by not wearing a body camera during the raid.
In Cosgrove’s termination letter, LMPD interim Chief Yvette Gentry wrote: “The shots you fired went in three different directions, indicating that you did not verify a threat or have target acquisition.”
Gentry added, “In other words, the evidence shows that you fired wildly at unidentified subjects or targets located in the apartment.”
Cosgrove appealed his case to regain his job in November 2021, but the court ultimately upheld the department’s decision to terminate him, local media outlets reported.
The officer did not face any criminal charges in connection with the murder. Four officers were formally charged by the Department of Justice with civil rights violations but Cosgrove was not one of them.
In 2022, the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council voted to allow Cosgrove to keep his police certification, making him eligible to work for other police departments in the state, WFPL reported.
Cosgrove is not the first officer to be removed from a police department after misconduct only to be hired elsewhere. The phenomenon known as “wandering cops” has been an issue for decades in the United States in part because there is a lack of national coordination to keep track of officers with a history of misconduct.
Taylor’s death sparked racial justice protests across the country in the summer of 2020. That year, the Louisville city council voted unanimously to ban no-knock warrants.
