Ex-officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor hired as a deputy

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A former Louisville police officer who fired the fatal shot that killed Breonna Taylor has a new job in law enforcement - a controversial hiring that drew protesters to a rural Kentucky county northeast of the city.

The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday confirmed the employment of Myles Cosgrove, who was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department in January 2021 for violating use-of-force procedures and failing to use a body camera during the raid on Taylor’s apartment, according to media reports.

About a dozen people showed up in downtown Carrolton Monday morning to object to his hiring, holding signs and chanting “Cosgrove has got to go.”

“I think he should be in jail,” said Haley Wilson, a 24-year-old resident of the small Kentucky town near the Ohio River. She said it is “absolutely ridiculous” that Cosgrove is now policing her town.

Investigators said that Cosgrove fired 16 rounds into the apartment after Taylor's front door was breached during a narcotics raid on March 13, 2020. Thinking an intruder was breaking in, Taylor's boyfriend fired a shot from a handgun at the officers. Officer Jonathan Mattingly was struck in the leg, and the officers returned fire, killing Taylor in her hallway.

Robert Miller, chief deputy in Carroll County, pointed out that Cosgrove was cleared by the state grand jury when speaking of his hiring at the small Kentucky sheriff's department.

In November, the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council voted not to revoke Cosgrove’s state peace officer certification. That meant he could apply for other law enforcement jobs in the state.

There is no national database of officers who resign or are fired in misconduct cases, meaning in a lot of cases they can apply for jobs in other police agencies and departments.

In some cases, agencies that hire officers who were fired somewhere else may be unaware of the officer’s history because they failed to do a proper background check, said Ben Grunwald, a Duke University law school professor and co-author of a study published in 2020 on so-called “wandering officers,” or those fired by one agency who later find work at another. In Cosgrove’s case, however, his history was highly publicized.

In some cases, it’s possible the hiring agency sees a previously fired officer’s history as a benefit, rather than a risk, Grunwald said.

“Maybe that’s exactly what they want,” he said. “Maybe they are looking for a cowboy cop who has gotten in trouble in the past, but they think they got a bad shake.”