There is no other way to describe what happened Wednesday morning in Atlanta, Georgia. The Fulton County District Attorney, Paul Howard, acted out in one of the worst examples of political demagoguery in American history. Sadly, there have been other DA's who have abused their offices to make political prosecutions, but few others will cause as much lasting community harm.
The background is that two Atlanta police officers were attacked by a DUI suspect, and one shot him after he stole a police tazer and fired it at the two cops while trying to flee the scene of the crime. Atlanta police regulations specify that when a suspect employs a weapon against police, he may be subject to the use of lethal force to prevent the suspect from harming the public or the police officers on scene.
Prior to stealing the tazer out of officer's holster, the suspect violently resisted being handcuffed, turning what had been a completely professional and polite half hour exchange, and a model of good police work, into a violent confrontation. The suspect initiated the physical violence, trying to first wrestle the two officers to the ground, punching the officers before stealing the tazer from one officer's holster, and then actually hitting him with one of the tazer's packets, knocking him to the ground with sufficient force to cause him to suffer a concussion.
Threat of anarchist violence cannot undermine proper application of law, nor can it justify a district attorney violating his prosecutorial duties. A runaway district attorney is one of the most dangerous public officials there can be. The cops were placed in a very difficult situation, not of their choosing, when the suspect initiated the violence. The DA is falsely charging them both, and trying to assert that the suspect is the victim and the cops are the criminals. This is the definition of corrupt city leadership, that has already placed the Atlanta public at great risk.
A police officer has a duty to prevent someone who is armed and dangerous from fleeing the scene of his arrest. There are many reasons, but the prime reason is that someone willing to shoot at a cop, even with a tazer, has demonstrated he is a threat to the public.
None of this seems to have mattered to the Fulton County DA, who outrageously has charged the cop who shot the suspect with felony murder, which in Georgia can carry a sentence of death or life in prison. Worse, the DA piled on eleven total charges against officer Garrett Rolfe, ranging from murder to assault. Few things could be as bad, but this DA managed to do even worse. The second cop, who suffered the concussion and had his tazer stolen by the suspect and used against him, is charged with assaulting the felon!
The DA then lied in his press conference by telling the public that this second cop would testify against the one who shot the suspect, something that the Atlanta police union has sharply disputed. The day after the DA's press conference, this second cop appeared before the media with his attorney to deny everything that the DA said.
Truth and integrity are alien to DA Howard. Several months ago, he was formally accused of diverting over $150,000 of public funds to his own private bank account, and is under criminal investigation for doing that. He faces a stiff runoff election, with his corruption being a centerpiece of the ongoing political campaign.
The DA also made an unverified charge that officer Rolfe kicked the suspect after he was on the ground shot. To date, there is zero physical evidence to corroborate that accusation. This statement has poisoned the potential jury pool, and even worse this DA failed to wait for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to complete their preliminary investigation of the incident. But, fair minded people don't need to wait for the GBI to announce their findings, the video shows what happened. The two officers immediately called paramedics to try to save the suspect, and then administered CPR on him. We know this because the cops' body cams showed them doing it.
The truth is this. There is one person responsible for the police use of force that night, and it was the suspect Rayshard Brooks. Had Brooks continued to cooperate with the two cops, as he did for over a half hour of calm and polite exchange, then it would have ended as a normal DUI arrest, and Brooks would have likely been released from jail the next morning after arraignment. Now, he's dead, the public has seen days of additional mass violence, including the senseless wholesale destruction of the Wendy's restaurant where the situation took place, and now the county DA playing an evil political game with two cops' lives.
Multiple police leaders across the nation have already publicly stated that the conduct of the two officers, videotaped from various angles, was proper procedure.
The most serious charge of felony murder is supposed to apply when death results from a premeditated decision to commit a felony crime, such as armed robbery. To apply that charge against the police officer, the DA is required to show that the officer somehow intended to carry out a felony crime against the suspect before shooting him. The evidence powerfully shows that the reverse is true. The only felony was the deliberate attack that the suspect initiated upon the two police officers, who up until that moment were performing their duties calmly and professionally.
The best one can say about this DA is that he's playing politics with the law to try to prevent additional public looting and arson. But, a moral DA does not abuse the law to attempt to placate anarchists. However, there is another distinct possibility, that the DA fears his own corruption charges will prevent his reelection, and therefore he has chosen to abuse the rights of these two police officers in a sadistic effort to curry his own political benefit.
In a truly Kafkaesque confluence, the same Fulton county mayor, who the previous week fired six Atlanta cops because she asserted that tazers constituted use of lethal force against the public, now says that the suspect in this arrest should not have been shot because the tazer he stole and used was not lethal force. Two weeks ago, the DA himself was on camera telling the media that a tazer under Georgia law is lethal force. Then, two weeks later, he tells the same media that cops cannot shoot a suspect who used their own stolen tazer against the cops because it is not lethal force.
So, if we take the statements of this mayor and her DA literally, they are saying that it's OK for a citizen to use a tazer against a cop, without it being lethal force, but that if a cop uses that same tazer against a criminal suspect violently resisting arrest, then suddenly it is lethal force! This is utter nonsense, and incredibly dangerous demagoguery.
Atlanta police regulations are far more clear on the subject, stating that a cop may use lethal force when, "he or she reasonably believes that the suspect possesses a deadly weapon or any object, device, or instrument which, when used offensively against a person, is likely to or actually does result in serious bodily injury and when he or she reasonably believes that the suspect poses an immediate threat of serious bodily injury to the officer or others." Tazers are considered to be "less than lethal force," but weapons of injury they are. They are not toys, and they are not harmless. A cop who uses a tazer without justification can and should be charged with assault and battery. This suspect used the tazer and caused a concussion to the head of one of the two cops, and then while fleeing, fired the tazer at the second cop, who then shot him.
We run a very serious risk of seeing mass resignations from metropolitan police forces, perhaps starting soon in Atlanta. Already, between eight and nineteen cops have resigned from the Atlanta police force, as a protest against the mayor's termination of the six officers the previous week. The police union has condemned this DA and the city mayor. If use of lethal force is to be considered a felony crime in this case, how can any police officer perform his sworn duty to uphold and enforce the laws? This isn't a rhetorical question. It is a serious issue that must be clearly answered by these city leaders in Atlanta.
Threat of anarchist violence cannot undermine proper application of law, nor can it justify a district attorney violating his prosecutorial duties. A runaway district attorney is one of the most dangerous public officials there can be. The cops were placed in a very difficult situation, not of their choosing, when the suspect initiated the violence. The DA is falsely charging them both, and trying to assert that the suspect is the victim and the cops are the criminals. This is the definition of corrupt city leadership, that has already placed the Atlanta public at great risk.
It seems no one in Atlanta public office possesses the courage to tell the truth in this situation, and all of them are running scared of the mob, vilifying police as sacrificial lambs served up to appease violent anarchists. What happens when the bulk of the municipal police force resigns in utter frustration, and leaves a city of millions of people unprotected? Again, not an idle question. But, a potential reality that these blind politicians seem incapable of comprehending.
-- Ken Stallings
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