The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department is preparing to fire two of the officers involved in the operation that led to Breonna Taylor’s police shooting in March, police officers’ attorneys confirmed on Tuesday. Detective Myles Cosgrove, one of the officers who opened fire during the operation, and Detective Josh Jaynes, who obtained the search warrant for Taylor’s home, received pre-termination letters, his lawyers said.
Jaynes’ pre-termination letter, signed by Provisional Delegate Yvette Gentry, accuses him of lying about the search warrant request, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CBS News. In the application, Jaynes claimed to have received information from a US postal inspector that Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, was receiving suspicious packages at Taylor’s apartment.
According to Gentry’s letter, this information “was not true”. The letter alleges that Jaynes lied about this information from a postal inspector, when it actually came from Sergeant LMPD John Mattingly, who he himself heard from “a Shively police officer”.
According to CBS affiliate WLKY-TV, Jaynes was asked by a Public Integrity Unit investigator in May whether he had intentionally misled the judge to obtain the warrant’s approval.
“I could have spoken a little differently there,” Jaynes was heard in a taped interview. “But I try to be so – so (unintelligible) so detailed. Or it is sometimes good not to be so detailed.”
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Gentry’s letter also states that Jaynes did not complete the necessary search warrant operations plan on or before March 13, the day of the attack that resulted in Taylor’s death.
“As the operations plan was not completed properly, a very dangerous situation was created for all parties involved,” says the letter. “You were the officer who conducted most of the investigation, however, neither you, your direct supervisor or your lieutenant were or available on the spot when the search warrant was executed.”
Lawyer Thomas Clay, who is representing Jaynes, told CBS News that Jaynes did not personally create the operations plan.
“This plan has been passed on at various levels of command,” said Clay. “There was a final briefing where an LMPD lieutenant colonel was present. So, if there were any flaws in this plan, it should have been discovered by the supervisors who reviewed the plan.”
Clay also told CBS News that a representative from the mayor’s office was present at the final briefing conducted shortly before the operation.
Clay called the allegations of falsehood “totally unfounded”.
Jaynes will have a chance to defend himself in a meeting with Gentry and “a selected team” on Thursday morning, Gentry wrote in the letter. Clay indicated that he will attend that meeting.
CBS News did not revise a pre-termination letter for Cosgrove, but his lawyer confirmed to WLKY-TV that his client had received one. The lawyer did not comment further.
A spokesman for the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department said he could not comment on the cases, citing the internal investigation.
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Former police officer Brett Hankison was previously shoot for his role in the attack. He is the only officer for face accusations resulting from the operation, although he was not directly charged with Taylor’s death. Instead, Hankison was charged with three charges of arbitrary danger for shooting at a neighboring apartment. He begged innocent.
Gentry took over as interim police chief in October, after former chief Steve Conrad was fired after the fatal police shot by David McAtee, a black man who owns a steakhouse in Louisville.
Taylor was shot and killed when police executed a search warrant at her home in connection with a drug case. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, says the police never announced themselves and that he shot them when they broke the apartment door with a battering ram.
Walker hurt Mattingly and the police responded, killing Taylor. No illegal drugs were found in the apartment.
Lonita Baker, a lawyer for the Breonna Taylor family, praised the department’s decision to fire the two officers, but made it clear that her clients wanted to see more criminal charges filed in addition to the layoffs.
“Sergeant Gentry did what she had the power to do with these officers, which is to fire them. And the fact that they would not be returning to patrol the streets of Louisville, Kentucky, is a step in the right direction,” Baker told the CBS News.
She made it clear, however, that “in an ideal world, all officers would be charged at this point and all officers, including Sergeant Mattingly, would be fired.”
Baker said she and her clients believed that “the actions alleged in the termination letters, which we have seen that we have evidence of, are also sufficient for criminal charges” against Cosgrove.
Victoria Albert and Erin Donoghue contributed reporting.