A 27 yr old AA male, Rayshard Brooks, was intoxicated and fell asleep at a Wendys drive thru last night. After cars had to drive around him, police were called, apparently he became agitated, failed the field sobriety test and resisted when they tried to arrest him. They tased or tried to tase him, he ended up in control of the taser and ran away. When he was fairly far from the police, it looks from the video that he turned around and pointed the taser at the police and was shot. He died at the hospital.
The Atlanta police chief has resigned and been reassigned, and today there have been protests. The protesters took over and blocked 14 lanes of the major downtown Atlanta interstate, and the Wendys where this occurred was set on fire. Fire trucks apparently couldn’t safely get through. This is still ongoing. There simply has to be a better way…
The highway was completely blocked by protesters for over an hour and a half. No one should die because they fall asleep at the drive thru. He left behind 3 biological and one stepchild.
I’ve heard It’s a stun gun rather than a taser. The difference matters.
A taser can incapacitate an officer within range, so it’s a direct threat. A stun gun needs physical contact with the target. So someone at any distance is not a threat.
He pointed the taser or stun gun, and then turned away from the police officer. He was shot after he turned away from the officer. Also, the range of a taser in 9 feet, and Mr Brooks was clearly further than 25 feet away from the officer when he turned. so the officer wasn’t even in danger of being tased, much less being killed.
The officer shot a man because he was running away from the police, and had taken a taser from an officer. He was a danger to neither the officer’s life or health. He was a danger to nobody, in fact.
In fact, even if he was within the range of a taser, the police themselves claim that a taser is not a deadly weapon, so shooting a man holding a taser is not justified.
This fallout will be interesting because Atlanta’s civic boosters incessantly promote it as “Mecca” for its African-American residents. The fact is that race relations in Atlanta have never been as polite as all parties want the rest of America to believe. And it’s not "The Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. There was a little something known as the Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott.
A taser can incapacitate a person, and if that’s a police officer, the gun is now available. That’s an entirely different hypothetical, but it’s not the situation here.
This whole situation is a bit strange and tragic. I get he was drinking. I get he fell a sleep in the car. Why not tell him they are going to drop him off home after calling his family and have the car towed or have someone pick it up? Didn’t police used to do this like years ago? Maybe this is a case that a social service person comes with the police to handle the situation? Sorta defuse it.
Maybe he is epileptic and had a seizure induced by some drinking? Why always assume the worse?
Then you see the 2 officers on the ground with the suspect and he does a wrestling move and gets away. What kind of restraint hold were they trying to hold him down with. No expert here but wrestled varsity for 4 years and took some Judo and a karate… Not sure what the officer to the right of the camera was attempting to do. He could of been restrained right there without any crazy holds. Maybe better techniques are needed for restraining someone…morally? Sure hindsight is 20/20 and this is a real live situation not TV.
So in the video it does look like he tased the one officer but the video cuts out maybe that is why the second officer reacted. Why not just keep chasing him? You have his ID, Car, and hopefully in better shape then him and call in back up? Why not aim for his legs if your going to shoot? Again, not TV. He’s running away and no threat to the officer but could he be a threat to someone else, if he has the taser? Is it just embarrassing that he has the taser and shooting him is just a reaction and not a thought process?
So much wrong here. So the superintendent of police resigns but from what I understand she actually has good community support and has done a good job with relations. So she is gone since she is white, I guess and will be replaced by someone that isn’t is my assumption. Not saying this is right or wrong. Just an observation. I thought Chicago police /politics were bad.
Completely agree, @Knowsstuff. They had his car, they interviewed him so know his name. They could have let him run and picked him up later. Or as you said they could have given him a ride home. They did not need to shoot him in the back. I read elsewhere some complete garbage that said that well, he “could” have toured to tase the office so that he could disable the officer and then turn around (from his attempt to flee) try to take the officer’s weapon and then he would pose a threat. All that “what if” nonsense to justify shooting him in the back. The news says 3 gunshots are heard.
From the video we see that the officer was chasing Rayshard with what appears to be his own taser. And it wasn’t until that Rayshard turned around and shot at the officer with the taser in his possession (from a distance of 8ft or so) that the officer then reached for his gun and shot him within the next second.
I think from what is out there so far, that this is a different situation entirely and that the officer was well within what was appropriate in this instance. It is never good when someone dies, but police have to act quickly, and this officer did. It’s unfortunate and sad, but this is not a racial situation.
My father in law is a retired policeman who first walked the beat in the 1970s when he returned from combat in Vietnam. He told me years ago that he very rarely chased suspects for minor non-violent offenses, and especially did not if he had their ID or knew who they were. He’s told more than a couple of tales of suspects at traffic stops deciding to take off on foot when they realized he might arrest them. He said it was better to just go to their home the next day and arrest them calmly.
All of America even saw this in practice in episodes of Andy Griffith, where Barney was always raring to go and prove his AUTHORITY over the citizens, while Sheriff Andy would preach calmness and contemplative policing. It seems to me the two cops at Wendy’s were Barney Fifes.
I thought the police response was justified UNTIL he ran away–at that point he was no longer a threat. The police had his car, so thru the registration they would have his name, address, etc. They could have picked him up later.
Someone elsewhere talked about how many ex military are in the police force. It made me wonder if that possibly contributes to a different response to situations by a person trained in the police academy vs the military.
This might be a stupid question but don’t police shoot a warning shot in the air and yell like “Stop running” “drop the gun” or something? Or is that just in the movies?