Watch the body camera footage. This shootee passed out drunk in the drive-thru lane of the Wendy's resto and was blocking the lane. The management understandably called the police to get him and his car removed. They could not do business with him there. The cops woke him up, and gave him several sobriety tests. He failed all of them. They decided to arrest him for drunk driving. He started fighting both of them when they attempted to handcuff him. He seized one of their TASER weapons and tried to shoot one of the cops. Then he ran away with the TASER. One of the policemen shot him as he ran.
The mayor of Atlanta fired the shooter without a hearing or investigation of his conduct. The police chief resigned the next day.
This action by the mayor was IMO grotesquely unjust. He should be re-hired pending an investigation. Failing that he should sue the city for personal injury. pl
https://www.insider.com/atlanta-police-footage-show-moments-officer-shot-dead-black-man-2020-6
In my country during communist rule, at the top of terror in the early fifties there was a clearly soviet influenced habit.
That of public self review. Usually for thought crimes.
I have a deja vu.
Balint Somkuti
You do not think the policeman should have due process?
Really? If you viewed the videos, you could see that the fleeing Mr. Brooks posed no imminent, life-threatening danger to the cops. The police knew who he was, they had his car, they had his address, they could have easily gone to arrest him later, or even called for backup at the time of the event and chased Brooks down. This cop, after the George Floyd death, the riots, the wall-to-wall news coverage was too stupid to realize that shooting a non-threatening suspect in the back might bring the roof down on him and on police in general. Where do they get these sorts of non-thinking cops? Or maybe they all suffer from LE-PTSD (Law Enforcement Post Traumatic Streee Disorder).
Sir,
I couldn’t agree more.
Chauvin applied a department approved restraint to Floyd, but he clearly applied that restraint beyond a reasonable time period and long after a reasonable person should have known that Floyd was dying and then dead. IMO, the drugs in Floyd’s system contributed to his death, maybe even caused it, but Chauvin did wrong. He should be disciplined under the law. That said, I’m not clear on why there needed to be riots over what happened (emphasis on “*I’m* not clear”. Was the city of Minneapolis not going to investigate? Was it stated that there would not be an investigation? Why wasn’t the justice system allowed to do its job as it did a couple years before when a white woman in her nightgown was shot and killed by a cop in the same PD? That process took time, but the cop was arrested, convicted, and sentenced. There were no riots.
The Atlanta situation is nothing like Floyd/Chauvin. Encounters with law enforcement cannot be made to be a an MMA match wherein the suspects gets to run away to fight another day if he prevails in a little whoop ass on the cops. It cannot be a game like that.
The cops had spent like 20 minutes with Raychard during the sobriety check. They no doubt had run him in the system and knew that he was a convicted violent felon on parole and I believe that factored into what happened. Still they were extremely polite and calm in dealing with him.
The cops have no obligation to allow a felon to go just because he defeats them in a fist fight. There is no obligation to later go playing hide and seek with a violent felon that may hole himself up somewhere with a gun; maybe hostages too. That is a threat to everyone’s safety; most importantly the public’s. R pointed the taser at the cops and fired. There is clearly a flash as R fires. No doubt the cop’s training kicked in and he automatically returned fire. I don’t understand people that think this is some kind of game and that the rules should be adjusted to favor criminals.
IMO, these cops in Atlanta are going to have a hell of a law suit that they will win. Worse, when the cop is ultimately not convicted in criminal court, there will be riots. The mayor set that up. The mayor is a dangerous fool as are all of the progressives/media egging on the protesters. It goes deeper than that, of course. The media has been propagating the myth of rampant racism for years. Inciting a riot should be a crime. Oh wait….
I advocate for a nationwide “blue flu”. Make the craven pols and progressives beg for cops to come back and on the cops’ terms.
Reported elsewhere, this guy had violent priors and a warrant out for his arrest at the time he was picked up in the Wendy’s drive in line. All public info and known to the arresting officers.
MSM again takes a snooze on this information. Red flag alert, why are black men still resisting arrests and also continuing to engage in multiple forms of substance abuse at the same time?
What demands we do not even mention these co-factors? That is our problem, our national problem; not necessarily only “police brutality”. What happened to our national psyche that made personal responsibility anathema.
What do we say when the rebuttal is “he did not deserve to die”? Cops don’t deserve to die when enforcing the law either. Police union can improve things a lot starting a public information campaign about the perils of escalatig an arrest situation with violent resistance.
Law and order means orderly responses to the demands law enforcement. And a robust complaint system that is capable of weeding out any abuses by law enforcement itself- not just the aggrieved falsely screaming uncle.
—Don’t do drugs.
—Don’t resist arrest
—Dorn’t set yourself up for potentially tragic outcomes
Notice the language in the piece “a scuffle breaks out”. No: this drunk violently resisted arrest and then attempted to assault the arresting officers.
Watch the *entire* video to understand the encounter, not what is being excerpted to lynch these white men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhdpG2XzRXQ
The fact is the man was shot for being slightly over the legal limit. The only time they saw him driving was when the police let him repack the car…which he did willingly.
Sorry…I really don’t agree. I don’t believe the people of Atlanta were “being protected” or were well-served by this outcome at all. The man offered to walk home…so what exactly was the problem with that? Arrest statistics for patrol?
Honestly, how many of us at age 27 would have acted much differently…how many would have been MORE drunk and possibly more belligerent in such a situation? Would being white have made a difference? Answer honestly.
Any similarities?
Mar 12, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/potomac-man-killed-in-police-involved-shooting-in-maryland/2020/03/12/d230bf60-64aa-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html
The man’s attorney says he was asleep beside his girlfriend when he was shot
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/14/duncan-socrates-lemp-maryland-shot-police-officer
The 21-year old, Duncan Lemp, is alleged to have associated with right-wing groups:
Some lives matter more than others.
May 9, 2020
https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2020/05/footage-released-from-montgomery-co-police-shooting-death-of-man-with-knife/
Some cops are more readily exonerated than others.
Off topic but pertinent to what is happening with this BLM movement.
There were not many Black students in the town where I did a long0term substitue teaching position. I had been asked to do that because they desperately needed a person with an English education degree.
The racial divide in the town where I was substituting was Hispanic and White. Many of the Hispanic students were from families recently living in the country.
One Hispanic boy interrupted the class so often and so annoyingly. No matter what I said or did, he just thought he was the most “cute,” funny person in the room. If I sent him to the vice principal who was supposed to deal with disruptive students, he got a talk about behaving and then was sent directly back to the room to cause disruption again. There was no stigma for being sent out, no real punishment for hhis behavior.
I finally realized the futility of sending him to the “authority.” So, I reassigned his desk to one in the very back of the classroom. However, I turned it to face the wall. I told him simply to sit and listen.
If you know anything about how some Hispanic mothers love their little boys no matter what they do, this punishment was too much because it embarrassed her son. So, I then had to be subjected to a meeting between parents, vice-principal, and me.
I made it clear that I did not need the substitue position, the principal who hired me for it was out looking for an English teacher that would agree to sign a contract in that district. She had actually begged me to agree to it.
I simply said in that meeting with the parents that I did not care about their culture, that my own culture of Germans from Russia would have punished me much more severely than I had punished their son if I had done what their son had been doing in the classroom Then I suggested that the “culture” we needed in the classroom was an “academic” culture that valued discipline and learning in the content the class was scheduled to provide.
It amases me that we are expected to simply excuse everything because of someone’s so-called culture. Sleeping in a drive-through lane. Really? Well then, the fast food joint should just shut down for the night to let him sleep in peace.
That’s what we’ve come to.
I watched the entire clip to and yes I agree with Colonel here that everyone has the right to due process even in the case of that cop. I remember when the the looting and damage to stores in Atlanta erupted Mayor Kiesha condemned the rioters and strongly urged them to go home. CNN’s building was partly damaged too. CNN even invited some Civil Rights era activists too who condemned the rioters and urged them to go home.
Now fast forward to when this case happened a few days ago, I feel like Mayor Kiesha is not being as tough as in the early days, and instead is going with the liberal flow. Nobody is asking why Wendy’s who employed probably 20 or 30 young kids got burned? Why nobody is asking that this is hurting black businesses and communities even more if it remains uncivil.
On the other side, in Seattle the CHAZ has changed their dominion’s name to “CHOP”, and there is a clip of the rapper-turned-Warlord there giving rifles to foolish broke kids to “defend themselves against genocide” and speak all the nonsense of French revolution and this and that.
Am I wrong to see all this as a democratic social experimentation?
IMHO, this is an open-air social experimentation of liberals on the black population to see how far things can go and what could they achieve when push comes to shove. It is widely known that liberals are notoriously infamous with regards to social engineering and seeing the world as their “lab”. The fact that CHAZ/CHOP is taking place in the uber-liberal Washington state and overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled should not be surprising to anyone. Additionally, it should not surprise anyone either when Chicago, Atlanta, New York, L.A, Oakland and other democrat-controlled cities start seeing their own CHAZ/CHOP movements taking over territory and declare autonomy and all that jazz.
In sum, I believe that the faith of CHAZ/CHOP is not gonna be a colorful one. I see the situation there from the perspective of natural law and natural state human beings. My gut tells me that they will pull the plug whenever they feel like it is going against them.
Police sometimes have to make life-or-death decisions in a matter of seconds.
Mayors do not.
I was surprised that this policeman was fired so fast. I do not think that was the way to go.
The impulse to quickly “make up” for past police mistakes will be strong in the days ahead. It should be resisted but of course in many cases it won’t be.
The fact of the matter is that the US has a much higher crime rate than our peer countries. While we have many virtues we are a violent people. In recent years we have imported a significant number of violent people from overseas. Income inequality is high and people feel tremendous economic insecurity and many have great trouble paying their bill from what they can realistically earn. Most violent criminals don’t even have a high school diploma and many are unfunctionally illiterate. All of this is to say, the issue of crime and punishment in America is complex with many moving parts.
Getting real and major improvements done will be a very hard task. It will have to include far more than what individual policemen do. There will be great resistance from both the right and the left along the way. I myself am not convinced we are up to the necessary honesty required.
Laura Wilson
What do you think should have happened?
Sorry to bud in. This is what I read about the shooter. He received some kind of silver certificate for making between 50 to 99 DUI arrest in 2019. That is all the motivation you need, forget about the rest. It is the system.
I am curious about the procedures when arresting someone for DWI, which I believe is a misdemeanor. Here in flyover country, NE & SD, I have known several people, all white, get arrested for DWI. None of them, I am pretty sure, had handcuffs put on them. Rayshard Brooks started fighting when they tried to put him in cuffs and it escalated from there till he was shot. Is it standard practice for the Atlanta police to put all DWI arrests in cuffs or did the cops feel Brooks was a threatening figure? What would they have done if I, a 72 year old white male, was pulled over for DWI?
Some commentators on this site suggest that Brooks was on parole and a convicted felon. Did a fast internet search and could not find anything to confirm that, although that might not be the final word on his past history.
Here’s what I was able to find out about Brooks’ prior convictions (and it wasn’t easy to uncover – could it be that his arrest record is being buried as much as possible by search engines?):
https://www.rapsheetz.com/georgia/doc-prisoner/BROOKS_RAYSHARD/1001370147?fbclid=IwAR2JV6zK5cNhwYYfDfyX06UKJA75B9MwWwZVc55JTjhcsxRq6bhRmbVoL6w
Some of his priors are for violent crimes, including against children. Would it be alright with his defenders if he’d managed to escape with the police weapon and used it on innocent people, or perhaps used it to obtain a gun from someone?
Laura, more innocent victims are killed by drunk drivers EVERY SINGLE YEAR than were killed on 9/11 – I’d guess the toll is close to 90,000 innocent victims of DUI since 2001. I know, my daughter was a victim (killed in daylight, run down at highway speed, standing in a parking lot, her PhD boss also killed). Some deaths change societal behavior (like 9/11), while others are unremarkable (like DUI deaths). If you want to kill someone, get plastered and run them over with your car. Maybe you’ll get a couple of years in jail.
Like most indicators of health and public safety, for DUI deaths and injuries the US is the worst performer of any industrialized country. No surprise there!
The Atlanta cops were doing their job. Brooks could’ve woke up from his stupor and got on I-75 the wrong way and killed a family. And you think he should have been allowed to walk home?
Let a prosecutor, grand jury and jury decide if the cop killed Brooks in a criminal act.
At age 27, I was not a convicted felon with outstanding warrants. I NEVER would have tried to fight with cops and surely NEVER would have tried to grab their weapon. Somebody that would try that should get a Darwin award.
Laura, since your initial premise is incorrect I will pass on your final contrived question. What are you really wanting to say? Honestly.
Media is making much of the fact that the felon was fleeing when he was shot by the police. What they do not dwell on is that he had in his possession as he fled a taser which he took from the police. That made him very dangerous. A taser in the hands of someone untrained in its use and with a demonstrated proclivity for violence can be a lethal combination. The police could not possibly allow him to be at large with that weapon. It would seem to me that the shooting was justified.
According to the footage in the parking lot it looked like the deceased pointed the taser and fired at the pursuing officer blindly over his shoulder. I can’t even imagine a way for it not to be a justified shooting. The mayor should be fired, not the cop.
I think the Democrats have a couple of objectives with this (the riots in general) farce. One, to divide the Party and the country along meaningless identity issues like race and gender instead of Class. This lets them maintain party control over more “genuine” leftist elements like Bernie Sanders. They will use this to get so called Bernie Bros out to vote in November. The second is that the destruction will cause additional economic damage and make Trump look weak. It’s a furtherance of their strategy “Don’t ask what we’ll do for you, look at how bad the other guy is putting out fires we start.”
The current color revolution is going to be greatly surprised when the PTB no longer have a use for them. Nancy P. wasn’t genuflecting, she was trying to hide her smirk at how easy it was to corral the Democratic base with a little emotional manipulation and frankly bad acting.
Upstater, Yes, I do think he should have been allowed to walk home…or escorted home. The keys to his car could have been taken and he could have picked them up at the station the next day. They could’ve called his wife to come get him. Every situation police face must be evaluated on its own merits…this was not a high speed situation, etc. He was near his own home.
I’m so sorry about your daughter. I do wish societal behavior would change with regard to DUI…some countries really crack down (Sweden, I believe). I wish ours would as well. I stilll don’t believe that death is the correct answer to this situation.
I would wait on the results of the autopsy to see what exactly was in this guy’s blood. During the 1 hour and 20 minute video of this arrest he was given a blood alcohol test, it registered a .10 which is legally intoxication – I suspect a lot of us have been at a .10 at times, it’s not that hard to reach that number. If you haven’t watched the whole video, you really don’t have an understanding of this matter. The guy had no idea of where he was at, there was no justification to just let him walk home.
Laura Wilson,
“DUI…some countries really crack down (Sweden, I believe). I wish ours would as well”
That’s why the man was being arrested, not walked home. That’s what five or six decades of cracking down on DUI has brought about.
It is discouraging that Brooks’ criminal history has not been in the media.
I did a search for George Floyd the other day and found that he had 5 kids (not the 2 or 3 I had seen) and that one of them was told by his mother, oh that guy in the news that died is your father. What a way to find out.
Does having a record mean you should be killed by a cop? No, of course not. But the discussions of these people’s lives that take place once the case is receiving media attention should include the relevant facts, such as desertion of children and prior criminal histories.
Anybody who thinks these shootings aren’t affected by black dysfunction is naive. By the same token if we don’t find a way to get blacks out of poverty and deprivation we will keep on having problems too. The status quo of all kinds of things have to be changed to solve the problems with blacks and the criminal justice system. That is why I am not particularly hopeful about the outcome; as I said above I doubt our ability to be honest and I also doubt our willingness to do what needs to be done.
What precisely was the situation that Officer Rolfe faced when he fired the shots that killed Mr. Brooks?
That is the key question.
Officer Rolfe’s view of that situation is presented here:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/lance-lorusso-officer-garrett-rolfe-rayshard-brooks
Black Lives matter may succeed in a task that my devout Russian orthodox mother never succeeded in. Make me a conservative.
Further development:
The police officer (Wolfe? Rolfe? I’ve seen both spellings) has been charged with felony murder.
Sundance is on the case, providing videos that call that charge in question:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/17/its-a-political-trap-outgoing-atlanta-da-sets-up-successor-for-problems-charges-police-officer-with-11-counts-including-felony-murder-in-shooting-death-of-rayshard-brooks/
From my somewhat limited martial arts experience.
Someone punches me, I punch back.
Someone shoots me, I would shoot back. Even with lethal force against a Taser.
If you were shot at, it takes several seconds (at minimum) for our brains to recognice that we arent being shot at anymore.
If the dead men was just running after resisting arrest (without weapons or stealing weapons) from a DUI arrest (meaning that the police knows the car, and that he cant DUI someone to death) then I would agree with a murder charge for shooting the fleeing suspect in the back, but since he was armed, and fired, well, if you shoot at law enforcement law enforcement shoots at you.
Andrew McCarthy weighs in on the case:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/brooks-shooting-the-political-prosecutor-caves-in-to-the-mob/
Samples of his views:
“[DA] Howard alleges that the underlying felony was aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The allegation is ludicrous.
…
As recounted by Britain’s Daily Mail (it is hard to get such information from American media sources), Brooks had been convicted in 2014 for felonies committed against his family: multiple battery charges, false imprisonment, and cruelty to children. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. But, as often happens in the criminal-justice system you’re supposed to see as institutionally racist and just spoiling to let black men rot in cages, the seven-year sentence wasn’t really a seven-year sentence. He served just one year and was released on probation.”