Rayshard Brooks Shooting: Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms 'Angered ... Beyond Words'

KEY POINTS

Bottoms said police training programs would be examined and officers required to intervene if they see a fellow officer doing something inappropriate
Brooks fell asleep in a Wendy's drive-though and failed a field sobriety test. He was shot after grabbing an officer's Taser as he was being arrested for drunk driving
"It didn’t have to end that way. It pissed me off. It makes me sad and I am frustrated," Bottoms said

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms Monday said she was “angered … beyond words” over the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks by a white police officer and issued an executive order to determine why police often revert to deadly force.

The order also would require police officers to intervene when they see another officer doing something that may not be appropriate. Bottoms told an afternoon news conference training policies would be examined to determine why excessive force is so often used.

“We saw the worst happen Friday night with Mr. Brooks,” Bottoms told an afternoon news conference, just hours after the Brooks family met with reporters.

“It angered me and saddened me beyond words,” she said, concluding, “It didn’t have to end that way. It didn’t have to end that way. It pissed me off. It makes me sad and I am frustrated, and nothing I can do will change what happened on Friday.”

Brooks’ death was ruled a homicide, but no charges yet have been brought against the officers involved in the incident. Bottoms said that decision was up to the district attorney.

Brooks death touched off a violent protest that saw the Wendy’s being burned.

Bottoms said she had spent hours reviewing bodycam footage since Friday and was upset by what she had seen.

“There are no words and no action that will ever bring them [victims of sudden death] back,” Bottoms said, adding all that can be done is to develop a “deep and abiding commitment to do all we can do so another child does not miss the opportunity to have her father present on her birthday.”

Bottoms choked up in recalling how Brooks kept saying he just wanted to go home to be with his daughter on her birthday. The incident came less than three weeks after another black man, George Floyd, died begging for air as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. His death touched off nationwide racial justice protests.

Police said Brooks, 27, a father of four, failed a field sobriety test. He was shot and killed after he grabbed an officer’s stun gun. She said future training needs to address whether it is proper to apply deadly force “if someone has your Taser. … The desire is for there to be de-escalation when other options are available.”

Officers talked with Brooks for nearly 30 minutes before the shooting. [WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE]

Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution officers should have let him walk home or called someone to pick him up.

The shooting led to the immediate firing of the officer who fired his weapon, Garrett Rolfe, 27, and the resignation of Atlanta’s police chief.

“[The officer] had other options instead of shooting him in the back,” Chris Stewart, an attorney hired by the Brooks family told a news conference just hours before Bottoms spoke. “Are you not tired of seeing cases like this happen?”

“One of our biggest fears became a reality,” niece Chassidy Evans told reporters. “Blessing, Memory and Dream will never get to see their father again.”