The Atlanta police officer who fatally shot a black man has been fired, according to the city’s police department.
Officer Garrett Rolfe was fired early Sunday, a day after Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned Saturday following the Friday night killing of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks. Another officer involved in the incident, Devin Brosnan, was also placed on administrative leave.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is looking into the incident, said the confrontation began with the officers responding to a complaint that a man was sleeping in a car blocking a Wendy’s drive-thru lane. Brooks failed a sobriety test and resisted officers’ attempts to arrest him, the bureau said.
Released security camera footage shows Brooks running from Brosnan and Rolfe as he is holding an object toward an officer a few steps behind him. Rolfe draws his gun and fires as Brooks continues to run 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. Rolfe fired about three shots.
“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 said.
L. Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Brooks’s family, said Rolfe should be charged for “an unjustified use of deadly force, which equals murder.”
“You can’t have it both ways in law enforcement,” Stewart said. “You can’t say a Taser is a nonlethal weapon … but when an African American grabs it and runs with it, now it’s some kind of deadly, lethal weapon that calls for you to unload on somebody.”
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms backed the firing, saying she did not believe Rolfe’s use of deadly force was justified.
The incident comes after weeks of protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Floyd, an unarmed black man, died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes until he became unconscious. Protests around the world have since demanded an end to racial injustice and police brutality.
