Atlanta police have released bodycam and security camera footage showing the Rayshard Brooks shooting which has resulted in another round of riots. Fox News. Officers confronted Brooks after he was discovered sleeping in his car at a Wendy's. The two officers interrogated Brooks and made him go through sobriety tests. His blood alcohol rate was at .108, while the legal limit is .08. After Brooks admitted he was driving and he failed his sobriety tests the officers involved tried to arrest him. Brooks then fought with the cops, stole one of the officers tasers and fired at officer Garrett Rolfe, who returned fire with his service weapon, killing Brooks. The incident resulted in another fresh round of riots and the Wendy's where the incident occurred was set on fire.
An edited version of the encounter can be seen below:
My Comment:
I think this might be the case where people start to turn on Black Lives Matter. In the past couple of weeks, BLM has been venerated to the point where speaking out against them could cost you your job. Part of that is that the three main cases in this round of riots, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, were at least somewhat sympathetic and examples of the police screwing up.
This case though? I struggle to see how they police did anything wrong here. Brooks was clearly in the wrong when he drove to Wendy's drunk, he was clearly wrong when he fought with the cops and he couldn't have been more wrong when he took a shot at officer Rolfe. I don't see how the police could have handled this any different.
Clearly, the officers should have gone to Wendy's and arrest Brooks. He was driving drunk and passed out in the drive through. At the very least they needed to come to make sure he wasn't dying. And he was behind the wheel which means in Georgia he's guilty of an OWI. I guess Black Lives Matter could argue that drunk driving should be ok but I don't think that will play well for anyone who has lost someone to a drunk driver.
And they were right to fight with Brooks when he started to fight them. Indeed, if anything, they should have used lethal force before he managed to steal the taser. Trying to disarm someone of their weapons justified lethal force, but the officers did everything they could to avoid it. Brooks was resisting arrest and successfully disarmed an officer, it's clear he was out of control.
And when Brooks fired on the officers with the stolen taser? That justifies lethal force every-time. The shot almost hit Rolfe and if it it he would have been vulnerable of having his service pistol stolen, which would obviously put his life and the life of the other officer, Devin Brosnan, at risk. I have every reason to believe that Rolfe feared for his life and was legally justified in shooting Brooks.
Black Lives Matter is making a big deal out of the fact that Brooks was shot in the back. In a similar case, the Walter Scott shooting, the officer involved was also disarmed of his taser and opened fire as the suspect was running away. He got 20 years for that but there is a huge difference. Walter Scott was just running away with the taser trailing behind him, so there wasn't a self-defense motive. In this case, Brooks was actually holding the taser and had just fired on the officers, which makes it way different than the Scott case. He was running away but he was also shooting at the officers, which makes shooting them in the back more than justified.
Of course the rioters and arsonists don't care about any of this. They have a world view that won't be changed by facts and for them any killing of a black person by a police officer is wrong. I doubt it would have mattered if Brooks had a real gun and was shooting at the cops, to them the cops should have just laid down and died.
I think the reaction to this is just shameful. Firing Officer Rolfe when he did everything right is disgusting. Burning down Wendy's is even worse as none of this was their fault. Even if the officers involved didn't do it right, which they did, all Wendy's did is call the cops because a drunk was blocking their drivethrough. Of course to Black Lives Matter, that's the same as pulling the trigger themselves. It's beyond stupid, a company is supposed to just tolerate someone ruining their business because of the color of his skin?
Does this mean that the Black Lives Matter fever is going to break soon? I don't know. It does seem that conservative voices are more willing to speak out about this case, but it's going to depend on non-conservative moderates. If this is a line too far then them than we might actually make some progress. If not, then the current status quo, riots whenever a black person dies regardless of the actual circumstances, will continue.
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