The shooting death this weekend of Rayshard Brooks is tragic. It also does not appear to be a cut-and-dried case of wanton police brutality, despite what you may have heard from news reports.
“The family of Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed black man who was shot twice in the back by a white Atlanta police officer on Friday after he fell asleep in his car, have called for murder charges and a radical overhaul of the city’s police department,” the Guardian reported Monday.
Earlier, on Sunday, MSNBC ran a segment that claimed Brooks was “an unarmed African American man.”
This does not quite appear to be the whole story.
On Friday, Atlanta police officers responded to complaints that Brooks had fallen asleep in his car in a Wendy’s parking lot. What began as a sobriety test reportedly spun out of control, turning into a violent altercation between the officers and Brooks, who supposedly had been drinking. In the ensuing struggle, Brooks allegedly took an officer’s Taser. The Atlanta man then broke free from the tussle and began to flee on foot. As he made his getaway, Brooks appeared to fire the stolen Taser at one of the police officers, who responded by using deadly force. Brooks was shot and killed. The Fulton County medical examiner ruled Sunday that the man’s death was a homicide.
Witness videos uploaded to social media shortly after the incident appear to show Brooks stealing and firing the Taser at the officers. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also said in a statement made available at around 7:30 a.m. on Saturday that Brooks had attempted to use the stun gun on the officers. Footage made publicly available that same day appears to back up this version of events.
Yet despite the immediate availability of the witness videos and the subsequent statement and footage made available by the investigating authorities, certain news outlets have chosen to report that Atlanta police officers shot and killed an “unarmed” man.
“Fresh protests rose up after an Atlanta police officer shot and killed Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed African American man,” the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.
The Hill also reported that day that Brooks was “an unarmed black man who was killed by local police.”
Earlier, on Sunday, CNN similarly reported that Brooks was “an unarmed black man.”
In fact, as far as this story is concerned, CNN has been one of the worst offenders, reporting originally that Brooks was “unarmed” and then shifting the goalposts even after more details became available.
On Sunday, after CNN had already reported inaccurately that the Atlanta man was “unarmed,” it hosted former NAACP President Ben Jealous, who argued that “a Taser is not a lethal weapon” and that the officer who shot Brooks had “no reason” to “fear for his life.”
“Yes,” host Wolf Blitzer agreed, “and if you’re unarmed, except for a Taser, which is not, you correctly point out, not a lethal weapon, even if you run away, that doesn’t — you don’t deserve the death sentence, you don’t deserve to die, to be shot in the back as you’re running away and killed as a result of that especially when the police will have opportunities to catch you down the road in the not-too-distant future.”
Later, on Monday, CNN continued to claim with false certainty that “Brooks was unarmed.”
A report by the network even quotes CNN law enforcement analyst Charles Ramsey as saying, “Now you know he’s not in possession of a firearm or any other deadly weapon.”
Host Laura Jarrett on Monday continued to muddy the issue with misleading language, saying, “As the nation continues to protest the killing of unarmed black men, police shoot and kill a black man in Atlanta.”
We can debate whether the officers’ initial response was disproportionate. We can also debate whether the officers were wrong to open fire on Brooks after he allegedly stole the Taser. But we cannot state definitively that the victim was “unarmed.” That part of the story is at least an open question.
You would think that, amid the protests and unrest surrounding the wrongful death of George Floyd, newsrooms would handle any new incident involving a black man being killed by the police with extreme caution. But you would be wrong. Very, very wrong.
