Report: 2 detectives involved in Breonna Taylor raid are fired

Jan 6

By Dylan Lovan // Black Lives Matter // EEW Magazine Online

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) Louisville has hired Atlanta’s former chief to lead its police department after months of unrest over the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor and fired two more officers involved in the deadly raid.

The firings were announced Wednesday by city officials moments after they revealed their choice to lead the department. Erika Shields was the unanimous pick of a panel tasked with selecting the new chief, said Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. She’ll be the fourth person to lead the department in Kentucky’s largest city since Taylor was shot by officers serving a warrant in March.

“I commit to begin my work here with a focus on rebuilding community trust, trust that I believe was already eroding prior to Breonna Taylor’s killing,” Shields said. She also pledged to tackle gun violence in the city, which had a record 173 homicides in 2020.

“The last year has shown that we in law enforcement have a long way to go,” said Shields, who starts the job on Jan. 19.

The trust between police and many in the city’s Black community has frayed since Taylor’s death, which sparked months of protests, police reforms and the firing of the city’s longtime chief, Steve Conrad. Two interim chiefs, including the first Black woman to the lead the department, have served since Conrad was fired in June.

“We all felt that Chief Shields was the number one person,” said David James, a former Louisville police officer and the city’s Metro Council president. “She just rose to the top.”

Shields served in Atlanta for 25 years, including more than three years as chief, which ended when she resigned in June after Atlanta officers fatally shot a Black man in a restaurant parking lot.

Shields said she was “sickened” by the shooting of Rayshard Brooks. She said Wednesday that staying on as chief in Atlanta would have amounted to a distraction, so she decided to step down.

To people in Louisville who might be upset over her hiring, she said she “would just ask that people step back, take the time to see what I accomplished, what I believe in and how I led the department.”

Det. Myles Cosgrove, who shot Taylor, and Det. Joshua Jaynes, who sought the warrant that led to the March 13 drug raid, were informed of their firings on Tuesday. Officer Brett Hankison was fired last September after being indicted by a grand jury on charges of endangering Taylor’s neighbors with bullets that went through her home and into an adjacent apartment.

Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician, was shot and killed as officers attempted to serve a no-knock search warrant. None of the three white officers who fired into Taylor’s home were charged by a grand jury in her death.