Charges Brought Against Officers Involved in Rayshard Brooks Killing

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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12 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    Good.

    Now if they would just file charges in the Breonna Taylor case.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Agreed. Given that charges have been dropped against her boyfriend for rightly defending them in the house, you’d think they would have been charged with something by now.Report

    • InMD in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Assuming they’re fired from the force I’d trade their freedom for a national ban on no-knocks. Disbanding plain clothes drug task forces would also go a long way.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to InMD says:

        Thing is, I can absolutely see the need for something like a no-knock warrant. But I want to requirements for a judge to sign off on one to be a whole lot higher. It can not simply be on the officers say-so, they need video evidence, detailed surveillance logs, testimony of an informant who can be produced for the judge to talk to, etc.

        I’d also like there to be consequences for judges who sign warrants (any warrants, not just no-knocks) who do not do their due diligence. If they rubber stamp the warrant, and it goes sideways, then they just rubber-stamped away their immunity from a civil suit.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    Here’s what I don’t like about the situation. If you look at only the minute that happened before the shooting, holy crap, it looks justified. If you look at the 20 minutes that happened before the shooting, you see the cops toying with him for 19 minutes before they inspire him to act in such a way that gets the response of the minute before the shooting.

    There are a thousand things the cops could have done instead of what they did if you start at the 20 minute mark. Everything from putting a note in his pocket that said “your car is at Wendy’s” and getting him a cab to parking his car for him and putting him in the drunk tank overnight before throwing the book at him the next day. There are additional options to those.

    But if you limit watching the film to the minute before the shooting, you’re going to say “holy crap, this was a tragic shooting but I understand that the police need to be ready for crazy, violent people to attack them at any moment”.

    And if you watch for the 20 minutes before that, you see the cops gently move the situation to the one that resulted in that one minute.

    And I wonder if the jury will only be shown that one minute.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Jaybird says:

      Based on the DA’s statements in the quotes story he intends to show the jury the whole thing. Given what the DA said, its clear this was a bad shoot. Which means the APD is nowhere near done making changes. Because if officers have 41 minutes to goad a someone into doing something, that’s about 31 minutes too much contact with the guy.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Jane Coaston is one of those Voxers who shows intriguing signs of having spent too much time around intelligent libertarian-types.

    She’s worth following.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    Atlanta PD responded by calling in sick to the night shift. The police still seem to think they can win this by being defiant and petulant. Sadly, the police might be right.Report