The former police officer, who lost his job with the Louisville, Kentucky Police Department after firing the shot that killed Breonna Taylor in her home and helped fuel mass protests against racial injustice in 2020, is back in the ranks of the police.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, which serves a rural area in northern Kentucky about 50 miles from Louisville, hired former police detective Miles Cosgrove as its deputy last week, County Executive David Willowett said Monday.
Cosgrove was one of three white Louisville police officers who took part in a failed “no knock” operation at Taylor’s home in March 2020, in which Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was killed by a hail of bullets.
She and boyfriend Kenneth Walker were in bed when police conducted an overnight raid as part of a drugs manhunt. Authorities said Walker fired a single shot in response to what he believed to be a burglary, hitting one officer in the leg, prompting the three officers to return fire.
Attorney General Daniel Cameron later said investigators found that Cosgrove alone fired 16 shots, including the one that killed Taylor. But Cameron refused to charge Cosgrove, noting he was justified in using deadly force when Walker was shot at by police.
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US Attorney General Merrick Garland said a federal grand jury declined to indict Cosgrove because he played no role in drafting the fraudulent search warrant that served as the basis for the raid.
However, Cosgrove was reported by the Louisville Police Department for violating the use of force procedures and not activating his camera.
Taylor’s death, like the police killing of George Floyd two months later in Minneapolis, became a rallying cry amid national protests against police brutality and racial prejudice in the US criminal justice system.
Carroll County Deputy Sheriff Robert Miller told the Louisville Courier Journal that Cosgrove passed the sheriff’s office background check.
Miller also cited Cosgrove’s two decades of law enforcement experience, adding that Cosgrove was never charged in Taylor’s death and that the Kentucky Board of Law Enforcement has not moved to revoke his police testimony, the Courier-Journal reported.
