Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Atlanta takes steps after fatal shooting
Footage released; police officer fired
Atlanta police on Sunday quickly released body-camera and other footage that captured the shooting death of a black man by a white officer who was swiftly fired — moves that policing experts said could help defuse protests that were reignited by the shooting.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are planning to release a proposal Wednesday that addresses officer misconduct, training and tactics, and a system for local departments to better report cases in which officers’ actions result in serious injury or death.
Atlanta police announced that an officer, Garrett Rolfe, had been fired after he fatally shot Rayshard Brooks, 27, on Friday night. Another officer, Devin Brosnan, was placed on administrative duty. On Saturday, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms had called for the immediate firing of the officer who opened fire on Brooks, and she announced that she had accepted the resignation of Police Chief Erika Shields.
“I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force,” Bottoms said.
The firing of Rolfe and the quick release of the video to the public could go a long way toward easing tensions in the city, said Andy Harvey, a veteran law enforcement officer who is now a police chief in Ennis, Texas, and the author of books and training curriculum on community policing.
“Transparency today is a whole different ballgame. It’s what the community expects,” Harvey said. “We have to always be open about the good, the bad and the ugly. Not just the good. I think it actually builds trust and confidence when we’re open about the ugly as well.”
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that Brooks, who was seen on body-camera video sleeping in a car blocking a Wendy’s drive-thru, failed a sobriety test and was shot in a struggle over a police stun gun.
Cedric Alexander, the former public safety director of DeKalb County, Ga., who now works as a police consultant, said the shooting will undoubtedly lead to questions about how officers might have defused the situation.
“Here’s a man who took it upon himself to pull off the road to take a nap,” Alexander said. “Could they have given him a ride home, could they have called him an Uber, and let him sleep it off later, as opposed to arresting him? Now that does not in any kind of way excuse Mr. Brooks for resisting arrest. But the question is: Are there other protocols that police could have taken?”
“And people will ask the question, had he been white and pulled onto the side of the road to take a nap and sleep it off, would they have given him a ride home?”
LAWMAKERS’ VIEWS
Sen. Tim Scott. R-S.C., noted that Atlanta’s mayor had acted swiftly in the wake of the shooting, and he said it was hard to parse whether the police had used excessive force. “The question is when the suspect turned to fire the Taser, what should the officer have done?” he said on CBS’
Face the Nation.
Scott and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who have been working on the GOP’s answer to a bill released by House Democrats last week, said Sunday that both endorsed a ban on chokeholds, the maneuver that killed George Floyd as he lay on the ground pleading that he couldn’t breathe. President Donald Trump has said he does not like chokeholds in general but that they are sometimes necessary.
Scott, on NBC’s Meet the Press, said, “This is a policy whose time has come and gone.”
Lankford said on ABC’s
This Week that he supports a total ban.
But while Scott stressed that both chambers of Congress and the White House “want to tackle the issue,” it is not clear whether such a ban will appear in the GOP bill.
“I’m not sure we’re ever going to codify in law a useof-force standard,” Scott said.
Pressure for Washington to address police violence has risen sharply in the wake of Floyd’s death, as protesters nationwide have called for accountability and reform. But consensus remains elusive, as the two parties struggle over how to implement changes and how far the federal government should go in establishing norms.
In a bid to hold individual officers more accountable for their actions, the House Democrats’ proposal includes a provision to change the doctrine of “qualified immunity,” making it easier to sue officers who “recklessly” violate civil rights, regardless of whether they did so with intent. Scott called that provision a “poison pill” during his Sunday interview on Face the Nation.
“The president sent the signal that qualified immunity is off the table. They see that as a poison pill on our side,” Scott said. “So we’re going to have to find a path that helps us reduce misconduct within the officers. But at the same time, we know that any poison pill in legislation means we get nothing done.”
He suggested that a “decertification” procedure to weed out bad officers could be an alternative, but he acknowledged that would probably not satisfy Democrats.
Lankford said the GOP’s “focus is on basic things like transparency, police records, employment records, making sure that future departments can see what’s happening, body cameras,” and ensuring that the FBI has access to those records when someone dies in police custody or is seriously injured.
“Right now, about 40% of the departments around the country do that,” Lankford said. “We’d like to be able to get that to every department around the country so we increase that transparency.”
He added that better training in deescalation tactics, recruiting more black officers and focusing on mental health were also aspects of the GOP’s proposal.
Lawmakers from both parties predicted Sunday that any policing measure would probably have to go through drawn-out negotiations before becoming law. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said she believed compromise was possible. And House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., urged patience.
“There’s always potential for compromise,” he said. “Let’s just let both houses do whatever they’re going to do.”
D.C. GATHERING
Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia in 2018, said protesters were right to demand accountability and that they should continue to push until meaningful changes are made.
“There’s a legitimacy to this anger. There’s a legitimacy to this outrage. A man was murdered because he was asleep in a drive-thru, and we know that this is not an isolated occurrence,” she said on This Week.
Anger continues to grow. Protesters gathered Saturday in front of the Wendy’s where the shooting took place, and by nightfall it was in flames.
In Washington, D.C., Black Lives Matter Plaza was transformed into a church Sunday, with thousands of mostly black churchgoers praying, protesting, kneeling and dancing near the White House after marching from the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
It was one of the largest faith-based events in the more than two weeks of protests that have consumed the nation’s capital since Floyd’s killing, and it was the first big public event organized by black clergy. Organizers said that lack of events was due to extra caution in the black community, which has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Mask Required! Safe Social Distancing Enforced,” instructed organizers from regional NAACP branches and the historic Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. Marshals monitored safety. Demonstrators were spaced out in rows, and organizers frequently paused the flow of marchers to keep buffers between them. People bunched up in places but for the most part wore masks, including many with African-style patterns.
Howard-John Wesley, pastor of Alfred Street Baptist Church, said he and other clergy members were also waiting for an event infused with prayer — and safety.
“We were waiting for a call for something not just incensed with anger but something that integrated our faith,” Wesley said. “We wanted to carve out something safe for teens — I was scared to let them come downtown. We wanted to teach them about protesting peacefully.”
And on Sunday, that is what they did.
“It’s not rage or anger. God is here, and that’s hopeful,” he said.
That same ground near St. John’s Episcopal Church was transformed by afternoon into a kaleidoscope of prayers, chants, singing and preaching from Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian faith leaders. Among them was the Rev. William Barber II, who called for a “moral reconstruction” that pulls in people of all backgrounds and races and forces sweeping policy changes rather than moderate tweaks.
“The streets aren’t calling for moderate change,” Barber said. “God help us if we don’t.”
PROTESTS IN EUROPE
European protesters sought to show solidarity with their American counterparts and to confront bias in their own countries Sunday. The demonstrations also posed a challenge to policies intended to limit crowds to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
In Milan, protesters scrawled “rapist” and “racist” on the statue of a late Italian journalist who had acknowledged having had a 12-year-old Eritrean bride while stationed in the Italian colony on the horn of Africa in the 1930s. The statue of Indro Montanelli, inside a Milan park that bears his name, has been a flash point in Italy’s Black Lives Matter protests.
In Germany, protesters in Berlin on Sunday formed a 5½-mile chain in a message against racism and a variety of other causes. Demonstrators were linked by colored ribbons, forming what organizers called a “ribbon of solidarity” that stretched southeast from the Brandenburg Gate to the Neukoelln neighborhood.
CALIFORNIA CASE
In California, two state officials have joined a Los
Angeles County supervisor in calling on California Attorney General Xavier Beccera to investigate the death of a young black man found hanging from a tree in a park near Palmdale City Hall.
“The attorney general, as the lead attorney and law enforcement official for the state of California, will lend additional expertise and oversight into this important investigation and provide the community with the answers they deserve,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who called for the independent inquiry along with state Sen. Scott Wilk and Assemblyman Tom Lackey of Palmdale, both Republicans.
Robert Fuller, 24, was found on the edge of a 2-acre courtyard known as Poncitlan Square early Wednesday.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner’s office initially labeled the death a suicide. Fuller’s family and civic leaders quickly pushed back, insisting that it be investigated as a homicide and demanding an independent inquiry and autopsy, something the city also has requested.
“The City of Palmdale is joining the family and the community’s call for justice and we do support a full investigation into his death,” the city said in a statement, contradicting previous assertions by both City Manager J.J. Murphy and Capt. Ron Shaffer of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office.
Nearly 2,000 people gathered in Palmdale on Saturday to demand answers about Fuller’s death and to mourn the man who was described by family and friends as a peacemaker with a bright smile. Information for this article was contributed by Russ Bynum, Sean Murphy, Christopher Weber, Elana Schor, Geir Moulson, Colleen Barry and Rebecca Santana of The Associated Press; by Karoun Demirjian, Hannah Dreier, Michelle Boorstein, Susan Svrluga, Fredrick Kunkle, Gregory S. Schneider and Michael Laris of The Washington Post; by Glen Carey and Steve Geimann of Bloomberg News; and by Laura Newberry, Kevin Baxter and Deborah Netburn of the Los Angeles Times.
“There’s a legitimacy to this anger. There’s a legitimacy to this outrage. A man was murdered because he was asleep in a drive-thru, and we know that this is not an isolated occurrence.” — Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia in 2018