The Rayshard Brooks story is a familiar one. He struggled with officers, grabbed a taser away from an officer, and was shot. Brooks had the usual extended criminal record linking him to everything from armed robberies, and a shooting death in a carjacking, he was sentenced for battery and felony cruelty to children for an incident involving his own family, and was on probation at the time he got involved in a fight with police.
Despite that, Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms demanded the firing of the officer involved and forced out the police chief.
But the Atlanta Civil Service Board called for a halt on the BLM lynching.
Garrett Rolfe, the fired Atlanta Police officer who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks in a Wendy’s parking lot last summer, has been reinstated by the Atlanta Civil Service Board.
The board released its decision Wednesday stating:
“Due to the City’s failure to comply with several provisions of the Code and the information received during witnesses’ testimony, the Board concludes the Appellant was not afforded his right to due process. Therefore, the Board GRANTS the Appeal of Garrett Rolfe and revokes his dismissal as an employee of the APD.”
Even the family lawyers looking to cash in are saying that Bottoms jumped the gun.
In an afternoon press conference, those attorneys – L. Chris Stewart, who was part of the legal team representing George Floyd’s family in Minnesota, and Justin Miller – placed the blame on the city for the outcome, saying they rushed the process to pacify protesters and, in so doing, subverted real justice.
Handing a victim over to a racist mob is rarely the right thing to do. But Bottoms admitted that’s what she did.
“Given the volatile state of our city and nation last summer, the decision to terminate this officer, after he fatally shot Mr. Brooks in the back, was the right thing to do. Had immediate action not been taken, I firmly believe that the public safety crisis we experienced during that time would have been significantly worse,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in her own statement.
It’s an extraordinary statement in terms of liability.
This doesn’t end the attempt to wrongfully prosecute Rolfe over the shooting, but it calls out the abusive behavior of the Bottoms administration which keeps hitting rock bottom.
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