San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Atlanta’s top cop quits after fatal shooting
ATLANTA — This city’s police chief resigned Saturday hours after a black man was fatally shot by officers in a struggle following a field sobriety test. Authorities said the slain man had grabbed an officer’s Taser but was running away when he was shot.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the resignation of Police Chief Erika Shields at a news conference as roughly 150 protesters marched outside the Wendy’s restaurant where 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot late Friday. The mayor also said she called for the immediate termination of the officer who fire at Brooks.
“I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force,” Bottoms said.
She said it was Shields’ decision to step aside as police chief and that she would remain with the city in an undetermined role. Interim Corrections Chief Rodney Bryant would serve as interim police chief until a permanent replacement is found.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the shooting, said the deadly confrontation started with officers responding to a complaint that a man was sleeping in a car blocking the restaurant’s drive-thru lane. The GBI said Brooks failed a field sobriety test and then resisted officers’ attempts to arrest him.
The GBI released security camera video of the shooting. 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. The man then falls to the ground in the parking lot.
GBI Director Vic Reynolds said Brooks had grabbed a Taser from one of the officers and appeared to point it at the officer as he fled, prompting the officer to reach for his gun.
“In a circumstance like this where an officer is involved in the use of deadly force, the public has a right to know what happened,” Reynolds told a news conference on a day when protesters gathered at the scene of the shooting and in other areas of Atlanta.
The video does not show Brooks’ initial struggle with police.
The shooting came at a time of heightened tension over police brutality and calls for reforms across the U.S. after the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Atlanta was among U.S. cities where large crowds of protesters took to the streets.
A crowd of roughly 150 demonstrators, including members of Brooks’ family, gathered Saturday outside the restaurant where he was shot. Police shut down streets for several blocks around the restaurant as protesters marched peacefully in the streets.
Among them was Crystal Brooks, who said she is Rayshard Brooks’ sister-in-law. “He wasn’t causing anyone any harm,” she said.
“The people are upset,” said Gerald Griggs, an attorney and a vice president of Atlanta’s NAACP chapter. “They want to know why their dear brother Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed when he was merely asleep on the passenger side and not doing anything.”
Though Brooks struggled with officers, Griggs said, “they could have used nonlethal force to take him down.”
Reynolds said his agents worked through the night interviewing witnesses and reviewing video. He said their findings show that Brooks tried to fight off two officers when they tried to arrest him and at one point managed to take a Taser away from one of them.
A security camera recorded Brooks “running or fleeing from Atlanta police officers,” Reynolds said. “It appears that he has in his hand a Taser.”
During a short foot chase, Brooks “turns around and it appears at that time he points a Taser at an Atlanta officer,” Reynolds said. That’s when the officer drew his gun and shot Brooks, he said, estimating that the officer fired three times.
Deputy Police Chief Timothy Peek said late Friday that both officers deployed their Tasers in an attempt to subdue the suspect but were unable to “stop the aggression of the fight.”
Reynolds said his agents will turn over results of their investigation to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, whose office will decide whether criminal charges are warranted against either of the officers.
Howard said Saturday his office had already gotten involved.
Shields, Atlanta’s police chief for less than four years, was initially praised in the days after Floyd’s death. She said the Minnesota officers involved should go to prison and walked into crowds of protesters in downtown Atlanta, telling demonstrators she understood their frustrations and fears. She appeared at Bottoms’ side as the mayor made an impassioned plea for protesters to go home when things turned violent, with smashed storefronts and police cruisers set ablaze.
Days later, Shields fired two officers and benched three others caught on video May 30 in a hostile confrontation with two college students whose car was stuck in traffic caused by the protests. The officers shouted at the pair, fired Tasers at them and dragged them from the vehicle. When prosecutors charged six officers with crimes in the incident, however, Shields questioned the timing and appropriateness of the charges.
The shooting of Brooks two weeks later raised further questions about the Atlanta department.
“What has become abundantly clear over the last couple of weeks in Atlanta is that while we have a police force full of men and women who work alongside our communities with honor, respect and dignity, there has been a disconnect with what our expectations are and should be, as it relates to interactions with our officers and the communities in which they are entrusted to protect,” Bottoms said at a Saturday evening news conference.