As Americans have recently hit streets in more than 2,000 cities and towns to protest racial injustice and police brutality, another killing of a black man at the hands of a white officer, captured on video, is continuing to increase scrutiny on policing and heighten calls to reform. “Police officers can’t continue to be judge, jury, and executioner,” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar said Sunday on CNN in response to the killing of Rayshard Brooks. California Senator Kamala Harris tweeted Sunday that “Brooks’ tragic death should never have happened.”
The fatal confrontation began when officers responded to a complaint about a man asleep in his car, blocking a Wendy’s drive-thru, the Associated Press reports. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation—which is probing the matter—said that the 27-year-old Brooks ran from the police after failing a sobriety test and grabbing an officer’s Taser, which GBI Director Vic Reynolds said he “appeared to point” at police “as he fled the restaurant parking lot, prompting the officer to reach for his gun.” Reynolds estimated that the officer who shot Brooks fired three times. The security camera video of the shooting released by the GBI on Saturday does not show Brooks’ initial struggle with the police, the AP notes. “The footage shows a man running from two police officers as he raises a hand, which is holding some type of object, toward an officer a few steps behind him. The officer draws his gun and fires as the man keeps running, then falls to the ground in the parking lot.”
The fallout has been swift, with chief of the Atlanta Police Department stepping down Saturday. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the resignation of Erika Shields, the city’s police chief, at a news conference on Saturday. The mayor said it was Shields’ own decision to step down, one she made “because of her desire that Atlanta be a model of what meaningful reform should look like across the country” and “so that the city may move forward with urgency in rebuilding the trust so desperately needed throughout our communities.” Bottoms also called for the immediate termination of the officer who shot Brooks. “I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force,” the mayor said. CNN later reported that the officer who shot Brooks, Garrett Rolfe, had been fired and a second officer involved had been placed on administrative duty, per Atlanta police spokesman Carlos Campos.
The news conference took place as around 150 people marched outside the Wendy’s where Brooks was shot, part of “a new wave of protests in Atlanta” set off by the killing that, as the AP notes, comes “after turbulent demonstrations [following] the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis had simmered down.” By Saturday night, the fast-food restaurant was in flames, as protesters torched the site of the shooting.
As demonstrations turned destructive, police dispensed tear gas and sounded a flash bang in an attempt to clear people from the area, a chaotic scene captured in the Twitter video posted by CNN’s Natasha Chen. Los Angeles Times reporter Jenny Jarvie also documented the unrest on Twitter, posting footage of the standoff between police and protesters after demonstrators marched onto a connector and caused the shutdown of a major interstate.
In a news conference on Saturday, Justin Miller, one of the two attorneys hired to represent the Brooks family, spoke to the role that video has played in igniting protests and the broader national reckoning over racial injustice. “We don’t think these are one-offs. We know they’re not. We are seeing them more and more, and that’s not because society is getting worse. It’s just because technology is getting better,” he said Saturday. “It’s the same stuff that’s been happening. The difference is, you can’t lie in your report because there’s a camera that’s going to get you,” Miller remarked, referencing the ample footage documented by eyewitness videos as well as the restaurant security camera, which the New York Times used in a video analysis showing the sequence of events leading up to Brooks’ death. The Times has also received police bodycam and dashcam footage, the examination of which is reportedly underway.
“We saw today what happened last night,” Miller said. “Mr. Brooks was not perfect. He could have done a couple things, too—and we’re not saying he couldn’t have. But the officer had the last best chance to stop that from happening. He had the most training to stop that from happening, and he didn’t do that. And that resulted in our client’s death.”
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