At gutted Wendy’s, mix of feelings

Many decry police killing; others bring flowers, help clean up.

Dozens of people gathered outside the smoldering hulk of the University Avenue Wendy’s on Sunday morning.

Many were moved by the death of Rayshard Brooks, a black man who died after being shot by a white police officer in the restaurant’s parking lot Friday night. Many came bearing flowers for an impromptu memorial. Others came to help clean up after the restaurant had been set ablaze amid a protest Saturday night.

“The brother was running away,” said a dismayed Bo Rodney, 54. “Deadly force was not necessary.”

Rodney’s view on the fatal shooting was the prevailing sentiment among the people gathered at a second day of protests over the killing of another black man by police.

“We have so much anxiety and anger because of what white folks do to us on the daily,” said Rodney, who lives in the nearby Peoplestown neighborhood. “That could have been me.”

People clutched Black Lives Matter posters and took turns at a bullhorn, calling for change. People drove by, honking in support.

“People all over the place want their feelings heard,” said Ronald Williams, who lives in downtown Atlanta, a city that for him is one of the best places for a black person to live. The protests that he has been attending aren’t so much about this city, he said, though this latest death may change that.

The situation did not have to escalate to violence, said Joyce Sheperd, the Atlanta City Council member who represents the area, and one of several members who were at the restaurant parking lot Sunday morning.

Police were called to the scene with a complaint that Brooks had fallen asleep behind the wheel, blocking the drive-thru lane. Brooks, 27, had nearly a half-hour of conversation with officers, when he answered their questions about where he’d been Friday night and what he’d been drinking.

“The choice was: Do I lock him up because he’s drunk? Or do I say, ‘Why don’t you park your car and get over it?” Sheperd said.

They should have let him sleep it off or let him walk home if he lived nearby, she said, or they should have called someone to pick him up.

Brooks died of two “gunshot wounds of the back,” the Fulton County Medical Examiner reported Sunday.

Officer Garrett Rolfe, also 27, was terminated, while Officer Devin Brosnan was put on administrative duty. On Saturday, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the resignation of Chief Erika Shields.

Sheperd said she likes Shields but thinks that under the circumstances she had to go. Sheperd also was thinking of the rough arrests of two young black people during a curfew crackdown amid a downtown protest last month. That incident resulted in criminal charges against a half-dozen officers.

“Too many cases,” Sheperd said, adding that the problem is much bigger than Shields or even policing. Racist culture is the problem, she said.

Some saw Shields’ resignation as a symbolic act.

It makes sense politically since it might avert violent protest, said Joe Mitchell, a schoolteacher who drove from Lithia Springs to see the Wendy’s for himself. He stopped in on the protest, then pulled out a plastic bag and donned rubber gloves and started collecting garbage along University Avenue.

Keeping neighborhoods clean is something he does as part of a group from his days at the University of West Virginia, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. “Even though I don’t live in this community, black people live in this community, and I’m black,” he said.

Mitchell said the path to reducing police violence against black people is through compassion and empathy. He said cops need to understand the people in the communities they are sworn to protect.

Rodney, the Peoplestown resident, said he thinks white officers are too ready to draw a gun on black men. It’s driven by racism and a fear of retribution that have lingered since the days of slavery, he added. He pointed inside the charred remains of the restaurant at a wisp of smoke rising.

“We’ve got to put that out once and for all,” he said. “This is way overdue.”

He wasn’t talking about the restaurant fire.

STEVE SCHAEFER / FOR THE AJC “We have so much anxiety and anger because of what white folks do to us on the daily,” said Bo Rodney, 54, of nearby Peoplestown, who came by the burned Wendy’s on Sunday.