ATLANTA — Atlanta’s police department reassured residents Thursday that it can still protect the city even though officers are calling out to protest a member of the force being charged with murder for shooting a man in the back.
Prosecutors brought felony murder and other charges against the white officer who shot Rayshard Brooks, saying that Brooks was not a deadly threat and that the officer kicked the wounded black man and offered no medical treatment for over two minutes as he lay dying on the ground. Another officer is being charged with aggravated assault.
Hours later, the Atlanta Police Department tweeted late Wednesday that it had more officers calling out than normal but that it had “enough resources to maintain operations & remain able to respond to incidents.”
“The Atlanta Police Department is able to respond effectively to 911 calls. Please don’t hesitate to call if you have an emergency,” the department tweeted Thursday.
It’s not clear how many officers have called out, but just one officer showed up for work Thursday morning in Zone 6, which covers much of Atlanta’s east side and which several dozen are assigned to patrol, said Vince Champion, southeast regional director for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.
Atlanta officers are walking off their shifts or not responding to calls because they feel “abandoned, betrayed, used in a political game,” Champion told the Associated Press.
“What they realized is that the city, meaning the mayor and the police department, does not support them,” Champion said.
Nikita Gleen raises his hand skyward near a Wendy’s restaurant on Wednesday in Atlanta. The restaurant was where Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by police. Gleen says he was a friend of Rayshard Brooks and will miss him. Former Atlanta police Officer Garrett Rolfe faces charges including felony murder in the fatal shooting of Brooks on June 12. Many officers called out sick on Thursday in protest over the charges. Brynn Anderson/Associated Press
Champion said he’s heard from several officers that they fear using force to protect themselves will get them fired or arrested.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who has issued orders calling for reforms in policing, also insisted that the department would be able to operate effectively and that many officers were still at work.
“If we have officers that don’t want bad officers weeded out of the force then that’s another conversation we need to have,” Bottoms said on CNN.
The decision to prosecute the officers came less than five days after the killing rocked a city — and a nation — already roiled by the death of George Floyd under a police officer’s knee in Minneapolis last month. Floyd’s killing set off nationwide protests that have urged an extensive rethink of policing and an examination of racism in the United States. On Wednesday night, the largest labor group in the Seattle area voted to expel the city’s police union, saying the guild representing officers failed to address racism within its ranks.
Brooks’ funeral is set for Tuesday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s congregation, the Rev. Raphael Warnock announced. Tyler Perry, the actor and filmmaker, has offered financial help for the services, officials said in announcing the funeral.
Police were called to a Wendy’s last week over complaints of a car blocking the drive-thru lane and found Brooks asleep behind the wheel. A breath test showed he was intoxicated. Officers had a long, relatively calm conversation before things rapidly turned violent when officers tried to handcuff him.
Officer Garrett Rolfe shot Brooks after the 27-year-old black man grabbed a Taser and ran, firing it at the officer, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said. But when the officer fired his gun, Brooks was too far ahead of him for the Taser to be a danger, and it had already been fired twice, so it was empty and no longer a threat, Howard said.
A lawyer for two witnesses said Thursday that the shooting could have been avoided and that officers need to be held accountable.
“As the video shows, this could have been avoided by just letting him run away, giving him another day,” attorney Shean Williams said at a Thursday news conference.
Williams’ client Michael Perkins, who was a passenger in a car that arrived just minutes before the shooting, said that when he heard officers telling Brooks to stop resisting he predicted that Brooks would end up getting shot.
“It’s just what I felt like was going to happen because that’s what’s been happening lately,” he said during the news conference.
Rolfe’s lawyers said he feared for his and others’ safety. Rolfe opened fire after hearing a sound “like a gunshot and saw a flash in front of him,” apparently from the Taser.
“Mr. Brooks violently attacked two officers and disarmed one of them. When Mr. Brooks turned and pointed an object at Officer Rolfe, any officer would have reasonably believed that he intended to disarm, disable or seriously injure him,” the lawyers said in a statement.
The felony murder charge against Rolfe, 27, carries life in prison or the death penalty, if prosecutors decide to seek it. He was also charged with 10 other offenses punishable by decades behind bars.
Prosecutors also announced charges of aggravated assault and violation of his oath against a second officer, Devin Brosnan, who the district attorney said stood on Brooks’ shoulder as he struggled for his life.
The district attorney said Brosnan, 26, is cooperating with prosecutors and will testify. But one of his attorneys, Amanda Clark Palmer, denied that. Clark Palmer said that Brosnan stood on Brooks’ hand, not his shoulder, for just seconds to make sure he did not have a weapon.
Brosnan turned himself in Thursday. He did not speak to reporters as he later left. The district attorney said he and Rolfe had until 6 p.m. to surrender. He said he would request $50,000 bond for Brosnan and no bail for Rolfe.
Brooks’ widow, Tomika Miller, said it was painful to hear the new details of what happened to her husband in his final minutes.
“I felt everything that he felt, just by hearing what he went through, and it hurt,” she said.
Associated Press writers Sudhin Thanawala and Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Matt Ott in New York; Lisa Mascaro and Jim Mustian in Washington; and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Ga., contributed to this report.
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