Various local media reports say Cosgrove recently was hired by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department in northern Kentucky. LPM News requested a comment Sunday from Sheriff Ryan Gosser but has not received a response yet.
Cosgrove was one of the Louisville officers who served a flawed search warrant at Taylor’s home in March 2020. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, thought intruders were breaking in and fired a shot, injuring an officer.
Cosgrove was one of the officers who started shooting after that. Investigators later determined he fired the bullet that killed Taylor.
Unlike other Louisville law enforcement officials who were involved in the raid or in securing the search warrant for Taylor’s apartment, Cosgrove never was criminally charged in court in any cases related to Taylor’s killing.
LMPD did fire him, though, for violating department policies, including for not properly identifying a threat before he fired his gun 16 times during the raid at Taylor’s home.
Cosgrove appealed his termination, but a Jefferson County Circuit Court judge upheld LMPD’s decision in a February 2023 ruling.
Chanelle Helm, lead organizer of Black Lives Matter Louisville, indicated Cosgrove’s hiring in Carroll County is part of a broader system that affords impunity to law enforcement.
“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,” she said. “When police or anyone in law enforcement do something very heinous, impunity follows them.”
Cosgrove and other law enforcement officials get rewarded for taking the law “into their own hands in the streets,” Helm said.
“If he needs a job, he can go work at the grocery store,” she said.
She said complacency concerning the current system is a problem.
Kentucky’s population is largely white, and Helm said the Black and brown people who do live in this state are “underneath an exorbitant amount of policing and incarceration.”
Helm often refers people to a group called The 490 Project. It’s a Louisville-based, grassroots group working on police accountability issues.
A protest over Cosgrove’s hiring was scheduled to start Monday at 10 a.m. at the sheriff’s office in Carroll County. Oldham County resident Amy Jean Tyler confirmed to LPM News that she was organizing the demonstration.
This story has been updated with additional detail.
