LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) – Louisville has hired the former Atlanta chief to lead police after months of unrest over the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, and fired two more officers involved in the deadly raid.
The layoffs were announced by city officials on Wednesday shortly after they revealed their choice to lead the department. Erika Shields was the unanimous choice of a panel tasked with selecting the new chief, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said. She will be the fourth person to run the department in the largest city in Kentucky since Taylor was shot by officers on warrant in March.
“I am committed to starting my work here with a focus on restoring trust in the community, the trust that I believe was already eroding before Breonna Taylor was murdered,” Shields said. She also pledged to tackle gun violence in the city, which had a record 173 murders in 2020.
“The past year has shown that we have a long way to go in law enforcement,” said Shields, who will begin the job on Jan. 19.
Trust between the police and many in the city’s black community has deteriorated since Taylor’s death, leading to months of protests, police reforms and the firing of the city’s longtime chief Steve Conrad. Two interim chiefs, including the first black to run the department, have served since Conrad was fired in June.
“We all felt Chief Shields was number one,” said David James, a former Louisville police officer and the president of the city’s Metro Council. “She just rose to the top.”
Shields served 25 years in Atlanta, including more than three years as a chef, ending when she resigned in June after Atlanta agents fatally shot a black man in a restaurant parking lot.
Shields said she was “sick” from the shooting of Rayshard Brooks. She said on Wednesday that staying as a chief in Atlanta would have been a distraction, so she decided to step down.
To people in Louisville who might be upset about her hiring, she said she would “just ask people to take a step back, take the time to see what I have accomplished, what I believe in, and how I was running the department. . “
Det. Myles Cosgrove, who shot Taylor, and Det. Joshua Jaynes, who sought the warrant that led to the March 13 drug attack, was notified of their firings on Tuesday. Agent 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 officer, was shot and murdered as officers attempted to file a search warrant. None of the three white officers who shot at Taylor’s house were charged by a grand jury for her death.
Investigators said Cosgrove fired 16 bullets in the apartment after the front door broke through and Taylor’s boyfriend shot them. Federal ballistic experts said they believe the shot that killed Taylor came from Cosgrove.
Interim police chief Yvette Gentry wrote that Cosgrove had failed to “correctly identify a target” when he fired, according to media reports of the letter, which was not released.
Jaynes was not on the scene the night of the shooting, but sought the order that the police sent to Taylor’s house. Gentry said Jaynes lied about getting information about Taylor in the command.
An internal investigation by the Louisville Police Department found that Jaynes violated the department’s procedures for drafting a warrant and verifying truth. Jaynes acknowledged in an interview with Louisville police investigators in May that he had not personally verified that a drug trafficking suspect, Jamarcus Glover, was receiving mail at Taylor’s apartment, even though he had said in a previous affidavit that he did. Jaynes said he relied on information from a fellow officer instead.
Jaynes and Cosgrove have had an administrative transfer, along with another officer who was on the raid, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly. Mattingly was shot in the leg by Taylor’s friend, who said he thought an intruder was entering the house. Mattingly said in October that he intended to retire from the department.
In September, Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who took on the role of special prosecutor in the case, said in September that Cosgrove and Mattingly were not charged with Taylor’s murder because they were acting to protect themselves. The decision was disappointing and outraged to those who had been advocating justice for Taylor for six months, and protesters pledged to stay on the streets until all of the officers involved were fired or someone charged with murdering her.
Three major jurors, speaking anonymously, have since come forward to say that Cameron did not allow the grand jury to consider murder charges against the agents for Taylor’s death. The three major jurors said they think they would have filed criminal charges against the officers if they had the chance.
For months, Taylor’s name has been a rallying cry for activists protesting the extrajudicial murder of black men and women. Famous musicians, actors, athletes and politicians called for the officers to be arrested.