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Hey GR:
what do you think about the Rayshard Brooks incident in Atlanta?
guy pulls into a Wendy’s drive thru and falls asleep.
wendy’s calls police.
the police (2 officers) talk to the guy, who is very conversational but obviously (to my eyes) drunk. The conversation goes on for 40 plus minutes (bodycam footage is released already- it’s in the link).
at about 40 mins, Brooks finally consents to a breath test and blows drunk. He literally stood there calmly while one of the cops went to get the breathalyzer.
the cops then tell him he was too drunk to drive and tell him to put his hands behind his back to be cuffed. At this point it looks like one of the officers might grab his arm to apply a cuff.
Mr. Brooks then fights the officers, bringing both of them to the ground. He grabs at a taser that one of the officers had pulled to apply, and eventually wrestles it away.
Brooks gets up and runs, with cop number 1 running after to taze him. It is said that security cameras show Brooks pointing the stolen taser at the officers while running away. OfficeR 2 is in pursuit and pulls is gun, firing three times. At that moment.
brooks is dead, the Wendy’s has been burned to the ground, and one of the cops is fired and the other on administrative duty.
It quite literally is considered racist by many to say “don’t resist/ comply.” But mr Brooks would be alive and probably out on bail today had he not decided to fight police and steal one of their weapons. This incident is why cops are always on edge. A compliant guy with some priors realizes he’s about to get arrested after trying to to talk it through, which changes the game.
That said, at what point did this become the cops’s fault? Was it for interrogating too long? Was it for putting a hand on the suspect? Was it for wrestling with the suspect? Was it for tazing him? Chasing? Shooting?
I’m of the mind that police should have procedures for arrest that involve backing away and giving instructions for the person to cuff themselves, vs initiating any contact. Some people quite literally change their mindset the moment they are touched.
I aim this at GR because of his background. Anybody else?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
Do not need to have a legal background to know one does not shoot someone dead for running away for being drunk, stealing a taser or fighting with officers. No capital crime was committed and no one`s life was in danger. The man who died was entirely wrong but his misdeeds did not rise to the level of being shot dead by police trying to get away in my opinion. If there are other mitigating circumstances, you did not state them. At the very least, if the officer thought the crime warranted stopping the criminal via use of force, he could have shot him to wound and not kill.
Burning down the Wendy`s is ridiculous and the act of someone criminal and stupid beyond discussion.
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Rocky, I don’t think there are other mitigating circumstances that favor the police beyond my comment that there is supposedly video showing the guy pointing the taser back at them, which I have not seen. I think they genuinely fired at a guy running away from them with a stolen taser.
I probably should have stated my opinion: I think the cops got it wrong from the moment they went to ground with him. Fine to chase a fleeing suspect but not clear there was a need given they had id and everything they needed to track him down after assaulting the officers, plus he was no longer a danger as a drunk driver since they could impound his car.
I think the shoot was bad in the sense the cops were put into a very charged state of mind immediately by the suspects behavior at the moment of cuffing, and after the chase started one made a split second decision to shoot that is very wrong in retrospect. In the past I would have said the benefit of the doubt goes to the cops when a suspect becomes violent. That isn’t really possible now. Cops have to be darn near perfect if they pull their weapon.
It goes to my points about procedure: With a suspect who has been compliant, there is probably no reason to touch or even get close. The scuffle started with the cuffs.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
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The security video clearly does indeed show Brooks pointing the taser and firing it at the officer while he’s running away from said officer. Does firing a taser at an officer constitute life threatening? Is shooting someone after they discharged a taser, and therefore, unarmed, constitute murder? Would a jury of 12 all agree that it does?
Fortunately we’ll never have this issue in San Francisco. Under new orders, police wouldn’t have responded to the call regarding someone simply asleep in a drive through–it’s not criminal.
On a side note, Bernice King and others are blaming Wendy’s. Why would you call police just because someone fell asleep in a drive though?
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My hunch is you call the police with any sort of trespassing, which I assume a guy falling asleep in your active drive thru is. I don’t see the upside to having your employees clear the nuisance.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
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Why call? What happened to “If you see something, say something”? A person falling asleep in a drive through is out of the ordinary, yes? Person is impaired, possibly has a medical condition, possibly DUI. In any case, there is a potential risk to the public if he drives away.
Shoot the guy? Inexcusable. He posed no risk when fleeing. IMO, there was a greater public risk with shooting at the guy.
How about this as an example of what should have happened. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/entertainment/denzel-washington-helps-man/index.html
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I don’t like to pose as some all-American expert on this stuff. I’m not a cop and I have been 14 years out of the business now, leaving it in 2007. Most of what I learned was on the other side of the street, as a PD. I was a high tech specialist as a prosecutor, and the guys I worked with, rather mellow 40ish fellows who had gravitated up from the ranks, and were no happier about cowboy types than the public.
That said, the big mistake the arresting cops made in my second-hand judgment, was not arresting Brooks immediately. They had obvious PC for a DUI arrest; they knew within ten seconds he was going to be arrested. You don’t need a breathalyzer for the arrest 0r trial, i. e., lots of cases are presented on the basis of a refusal.
So you politely tell him so, cuff him (telling him it’s for his protection as well as theirs, which is the truth), and THEN you discuss the matter. The arrest is non-negotiable, so you don’t stall on it. The way they handled it, Brooks may have thought he was talking his way out of it, then was understandably frustrated when – from his point of view – it didn’t work out that way.
As for the actual incident, I don’t know enough. You don’t need a threat of death to respond with lethal force – just the possibility of grievous bodily harm. A taser probably qualifies. The rest turns on detailed facts and circumstances I don’t know. On balance, I think the cop’s chances are pretty good at trial, regardless of the racial composition of the jury.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
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[quote quote=459]Here’re the videos:
Clearly shows the policeman firing on Brooks after Brooks fired a taser at the officer.[/quote]
Hate to admit it but I just now clicked your link and saw the video. In my opinion, the action with the taser was probably enough for the cop’s split second judgment to be less questionable. Brooks, who is already a violent criminal as of the preceding moments, actually fires the taser back at the cop.
Did he “deserve” to get shot? Not at all. Did he put himself in a fantastically dangerous position and then exacerbate it by waving the taser at the cop and then firing it? Absolutely.
You’ve probably followed the news that the Atlanta PD literally just fired a bunch of cops (some of them black) for using tasers on people, with the assertion that it was a dangerous (if not deadly…I don’t know the language used) weapon.
And, in my opinion, Stacey Abrams has gone from interesting politico to race hustling liar with the comment that “nobody should die for falling asleep in a car” or whatever the quote was. My retort would be that in any policing regime a violent criminal who chooses to wrestle with arresting officers, steal their weapon, and then brandish the weapon at a cop could die, and the cops do get the benefit of the doubt.
The NYT actually laid the incident out really well. Tragic, tragic, tragic, and it didn’t need to happen; but I’m thinking the cop may be getting a really big wrongful termination settlement from APD before this is all over.
We should have PSAs about not fighting the cops. Hard to believe that is necessary, but it is. Michael Brown, George Floyd, Brooks, all of which would have been un interesting arrests without the resisting and assaulting officers.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
11 charges against the cop including felony murder.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
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