#Georgia police training chief: Rayshard Brooks killing tragic yet justified

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Former Atlanta Police Department officer Garrett Rolfe conducts a field sobriety test on 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks.
via REUTERS

The director of Georgia’s police training center said the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks was tragic, yet justified – as he analyzed the three key decisions the two Atlanta cops made during their fateful encounter with him, according to a report.

Chris Wigginton, who runs the Georgia Public Safety Training Center for nearly all law-enforcement officers in the state, broke down the actions of officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan on Friday night, when Brooks was spotted asleep at the wheel in a Wendy’s drive-thru lane.

In the first decision, Rolfe sought to arrest the 27-year-old rather than let him walk home or call for a ride since they never saw him driving under the influence on a public road, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

“We tell each officer it’s up to them based on the circumstances going on in that case,” Wigginton told the news outlet. “I don’t know if APD has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to drunk drivers.”

Brooks registered a .108 percent blood-alcohol level – above the .08 legal limit.

Wigginton — who was a state trooper for 18 years — said the law allowed police to make a DUI arrest on private property.

“I think under the climate we live in today, the number of fatalities we have on the roadways, I think the days of calling someone to be picked up are pretty much over,” he told Fox 5.

But Brooks resisted arrest, Wigginton noted, and fled after grabbing an officer’s Taser.

The two cops the made a second decision – to chase him even though they had his vehicle and ID.

“If you get into an altercation, our job is to make arrests,” Wigginton said. “And sometimes that takes using force. Sometimes that takes pursuing people on foot. And the day that you quit doing that to a criminal, every one of them is going to run.”

In the final decision, Rolfe shot Brooks even though he knew that the Taser the man fired at him was not a deadly weapon.

Wigginton cited Georgia case law and statutes that allow police to use deadly force “to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

He described the Taser as an “incapacitating weapon” that could have left the officer vulnerable to “great bodily injury” if he fell and hit his head.

Asked if the same argument could be made if someone threw a baseball, a water balloon or any other object at a pursuing officer, Wigginton replied: “It does give the police some leeway in the decision-making.”

He described it as a “justified shooting,” adding that he agreed that “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something.”

Wigginton added: “But we can’t take out what the officer felt at that moment. What he thought at that moment.”

Rolfe, who has been fired, could face a felony murder charge, Fulton County’s top prosecutors said Sunday. Brosnan has been put on administrative leave.

“You’ve got the George Floyd case where everyone in America saw a murder on TV,” Wigginton said about the man who died in Minneapolis after a police officer pressed his knee into his neck.

“And you will not find a police officer who will look at that video and say that was OK. But they want to take Mr. Brooks case and put it in the same category as that crime that was committed on Mr. Floyd. And they’re not.”