Louisville police management is firing two of the officers involved in the raid that led to the police shooting at Breonna Taylor in March, officers’ officers confirmed Tuesday. Detective Myles Cosgrove, one of the officers who opened fire during the raid, and Detective Josh Jaynes, who obtained the search warrant for Taylor’s home, both received letters before termination, their attorneys said.
According to the copy of the letter obtained by CBS News, Jaynes’s pre-termination letter, signed by Yvette Gentry, accuses interim police chief. In the application, Jaynes claims that he received information from a U.S. Postal Inspector that Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, received suspicious packages in Taylor’s apartment.
According to Gentry’s letter, this information was ‘not true’. The letter alleges that Jaynes lied about the information coming from a postal inspector, when in fact it came from Sergeant John Mattingly, LMPD, who himself heard it from a ‘scary police officer’.
According to the CBS subsidiary WLKY-TV, Jaynes was asked in May by a Public Integrity Unit investigator if he had deliberately misled the judge to get the warrant approved.
“I could have put it a little differently there,” Jaynes said in a recording interview. “But I try to be so detailed (incomprehensible). Or sometimes it’s good not to be so detailed.”
LMPD
Gentry’s letter also alleges that Jaynes did not complete the necessary search plan on March 13, the day of the raid that resulted in Taylor’s death.
“Because the operation plan was not completed properly, a very dangerous situation was created for all involved,” the letter reads. “You were the officer who did the majority of the investigation, but you, your direct supervisor or his lieutenant were or were not available at the scene when the search warrant was executed.”
Attorney Thomas Clay, representing Jaynes, told CBS News that Jaynes had not personally drawn up the operation plan.
“This plan has been conveyed at different levels of command,” Clay said. “There was one last briefing where a lieutenant colonel of the LMPD was present. If there were any errors in the plan, the supervisors who reviewed the plan had to uncover.”
Clay also told CBS News that a representative of the mayor’s office was present during the final briefing held just before the raid.
Clay calls the allegations of untruth “totally unfounded”.
Jaynes had a chance to defend himself in a meeting with Gentry and ‘chosen staff’ on Thursday morning, Gentry wrote in the letter. Clay indicated that he would attend the meeting.
CBS News did not review a letter for the termination of Cosgrove, but its lawyer confirmed to WLKY-TV that its client had received one. The lawyer did not comment further.
A spokesman for the Louisville Metro Police Department said he could not comment on the cases, citing the internal investigation.
LMPD
Former police officer Brett Hankison was previously fired for his role in raid. He is the only officer who face charges arising from the raid, although he was not directly charged with Taylor’s death. Hankison was instead charged with three counts of intentional threat to the shooting in a neighboring apartment. He pleaded innocent.
Gentry took over as interim police chief in October after former chief Steve Conrad was sacked after the Fatal police shooting of David McAtee, a black man who owned a barbecue restaurant in Louisville.
Taylor was shot dead when police issued a warrant at her home in connection with a drug case. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, claims the police never announced themselves and that he shot at them when they broke down the apartment door with a hood.
Walker wounded Mattingly, and police fired back, killing Taylor. No illegal drugs were found in the apartment.
Lonita Baker, a lawyer for Breonna Taylor’s family, welcomed the department’s actions to fire the two officers, but made it clear that her clients also wanted to file even more criminal charges.
“Sergeant Gentry did what she had to do with the officers, which terminated them. And the fact that they would not return to patrol the streets of Louisville, Kentucky, is a step in the right direction,” he said. Baker said. told CBS News.
However, she made it clear that “in an ideal world, all officers would be charged at this stage and all officers, including Sergeant Mattingly, would be terminated.”
Baker said she and her clients were of the opinion that ‘the actions alleged in the termination letters, and which we have seen, do have evidence, are also sufficient to bring criminal charges against Cosgrove.
Victoria Albert and Erin Donoghue reported.