Kentucky County Thrilled To Welcome Breonna Taylor's Killer As New Deputy Sheriff

'We felt like he was a good candidate to help us in our county,' said Carroll County's Chief Deputy.

Two years ago last month, Louisville police officers Myles Cosgrove, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and four others burst into the home of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor with a no-knock warrant that some other cops lied to get by claiming, falsely, that a postal worker told them that Taylor was getting packages for her drug dealer ex-boyfriend. Taylor's current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, assumed they were intruders and shot at them. Cosgrove, Mattingly, and Hankison fired back. Six of the 32 bullets they shot hit Taylor, killing her. The fatal bullet, the one that ended her life, was fired by Myles Cosgrove.

Though Cosgrove was fired from the Louisville Metro Police department for failing to turn his body camera on during the raid and violating use-of-force procedures, he never faced any legal consequences for killing her. One might assume that being a world-famous killer cop might hinder his job prospects in police work, but apparently not. Cosgrove has been hired by the nearby Carroll County Sheriff's Department as their new deputy sheriff.

"We think he will help reduce the flow of drugs in our area and reduce property crimes," Carroll County Chief Deputy Rob Miller told the  Louisville Courier Journal  on Saturday. "We felt like he was a good candidate to help us in our county."

How would he do that, exactly? By making citizens fear that he will bust into their homes and kill them when they haven't done anything wrong? Is that a tactic that Carroll County Chief Deputy Rob Miller imagines would be effective?

Chief Deputy Miller also justified hiring Cosgrove by citing Attorney General Merrick Garland's decision not to charge Cosgrove and others with Taylor's killing as they “were not involved in the drafting of the warrant and were unaware of the false and misleading statements that it contained.”

However, it's hardly as if he didn't do anything wrong here. Even if the warrant had been legitimate, Cosgrove's reckless behavior at the scene still would have been a problem. Not turning his body camera on still would have been a problem. The fact that he was just randomly shooting all over the place still would have been a problem. 

"The shots you fired went in three different directions, indicating you did not verify a threat or have target acquisition," interim LMPD Chief Yvette Gentry wrote in Cosgrove's termination letter, "In other words, the evidence shows that you fired wildly at unidentified subjects or targets located within the apartment."

Now, of course Cosgrove has to work somewhere , but it sure seems like a real bad idea to let him be a police officer again. Surely there are things he could do that do not involve guns or provide him with the opportunity to burst into people's homes and kill them.

“The way in which he can go and get a job in the same field should be illegal. For a typical citizen, we aren't able to re-enter certain fields, if we're fired from them. That carries with you,” Chanelle Helm, the lead organizer of Black Lives Matter Louisville, told Kentucky Public Radio . “When police or anyone in law enforcement do something very heinous, impunity follows them.”

Who do they think they are? Priests?

People have already started protesting Cosgrove's hiring outside of the Carroll County Courthouse, as it turns out that not everybody is as excited to welcome him to their community as Chief Deputy Miller is.

“A small group of Carroll County and Louisville residents are gathered at the Carroll County Courthouse to protest the Carroll County Sheriff’s hiring of Myles Cosgrove, the former LMPD officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor.”

— Mark Vanderhoff (@Mark Vanderhoff) 1682346270 

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