A prosecutor in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta says that he expects to decide by mid-week whether to bring charges against a white policeman who shot a black man to death after an altercation at a fast-food restaurant last Friday.
Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Paul Howard told CNN on Sunday that he is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the death of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks, a restaurant worker who was the father of three young daughters.
Authorities say Brooks was shot to death by an Atlanta police officer, Garrett Rolfe, after Brooks grabbed another officer’s stun gun and pointed it at Rolfe as he tried to run from the parking lot of a Wendy’s restaurant as the two officers attempted to handcuff and arrest him after he failed a sobriety test.
Rolfe was quickly fired from the Atlanta police force and the second officer, Devin Brosnan, placed on administrative leave pending completion of the investigation. There was a significant amount of video of the incident, from police body and car cameras and restaurant surveillance pictures.
It is the latest killing in the U.S. raising questions about police use of force in which an African American man died in police custody, such as the death of George Floyd three weeks ago in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that has spawned coast-to-coast demonstrations in the U.S., some of the most widespread in the country since protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
The Brooks shooting drew new protests in Atlanta over the weekend, with 42 demonstrators arrested and the Wendy’s restaurant where the shooting occurred set afire. A $10,000 reward has been posted for information leading to a suspect involved in torching the restaurant.
A Wendy’s burns following a rally against racial inequality and the police shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, in Atlanta, Georgia, June 13, 2020.
Howard, the Atlanta prosecutor, said Brooks talked cordially for 22 minutes with police before the final moments that ended with Brooks being shot twice in the back, according to a medical examiner’s report.
“It’s very difficult to when you see the demeanor of Mr. Brooks to imagine that some short time later he ends up with him being dead,” Howard told CNN.
Brooks had fallen asleep in the drive-through lane of the Wendy’s, prompting another customer to alert police, who woke Brooks and eventually administered the breathalyzer test that Brooks failed.
“I thought that (his conversation with police) was cordial,” Howard said. “He was very cooperative. He answered the questions that the officers asked.”
Howard said that Brooks “would not seem to present any kind of threat to either” of the officers. “And so the fact that it would escalate to his death just seems unreasonable. This is not the kind of conversation and incident that should have led to someone’s death.”
This screen grab taken from dashboard camera video provided by the Atlanta Police Department shows Rayshard Brooks, center, struggling with Officers Garrett Rolfe, left, and Devin Brosnan in the parking lot of a Wendy's restaurant, June 13, 2020.
Tomika Miller, Brooks’s widow, appearing on the “CBS This Morning” show, called for the officers involved to be prosecuted.
“I want them to go to jail. . . . If it was my husband who shot them, he would be in jail,” Miller said. “He would be doing a life sentence. They need to be put away.”
Video of the encounter appears to show Brooks turning back toward Rolfe and pointing the Taser at him, at which point the officer is seen drawing a weapon from his holster and firing at Brooks.
Protesters plan to gather Monday at the Georgia state capitol in Atlanta, demanding criminal justice reforms and measures to address election problems that occurred last week when voters encountered long lines for hours as they waited to cast ballots in party primary elections.
People gather for a civil rights National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) protest march, June 15, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia.
A medical examiner in Fulton County, has ruled Brooks’ death a homicide, saying he was shot twice in the back and died from organ damage and blood loss.
Aside from Rolfe’s firing, the Atlanta police chief, Erika Shields, has resigned. Shields resigned Saturday even as the investigation into the shooting had barely begun.
“I have served alongside some of the finest men and women in the Atlanta Police Department. Out of a deep and abiding love for this city and this department, I offered to step aside as police chief. … It is time for the city to move forward and build trust.
A lawyer for the Brooks family, Chris Stewart, says he wants Rolfe to be charged with “an unjustified use of deadly force, which equals murder.”
“You can't say a Taser is a nonlethal weapon … but when an African American grabs it and runs with it, now it's some kind of deadly, lethal weapon that calls for you to unload on somebody,” Stewart said.
But the only black Republican member of the U.S. Senate, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, says more questions need to be asked.
“The question is when the suspect turned to fire the Taser, what should the officer have done?” Scott told CBS’s “Face the Nation” show, adding that what happened in Atlanta “is certainly a far less clear one than the ones that we saw with George Floyd and several other ones around the country.”