The Atlanta police officer who was fired after fatally shooting Rayshard Brooks had a dozen previous complaints filed against him.
Ex-cop Garrett Rolfe, 27, had multiple citizen complaints lodged against him during his seven-year career in law enforcement, including one for use-of-force in 2016 that resulted in a written reprimand in 2017, according to CNN based on records released to the media by the Atlanta Police Department. Other complaints included several vehicle crashes. Rolfe was exonerated in nine of those 12 complaints, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Rolfe was terminated on Saturday. He is now waiting to see if Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard will file charges against him and, if so, what those charges will be and how many.
Rolfe arrived after fellow officer Devin Brosnan in the Wendy’s restaurant parking lot on University Avenue, south of downtown Atlanta. A Wendy’s employee had called police to come out to check on Brooks after he reportedly was intoxicated and asleep at the wheel near the drive-thru lane, interrupting the flow of traffic.
When officers woke Brooks and had him perform a field sobriety test and blow into a Breathalyzer, Brooks was cooperative. But when they went to handcuff and arrest him, Brooks resisted. The three rolled around on the ground and somehow Brooks managed to grab a stun gun off one of the officers and wrestle free of the officers’ grasp. Brooks was reportedly fleeing the scene when he was shot twice in the back.
Brosnan was placed on administrative duty while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation concludes its probe of the fatal encounter with Brooks.
The killing of Brooks set off several days of demonstrations, where protesters stopped traffic on Insterstate 75-/85 on Saturday afternoon and someone set fire to the Wendy’s restaurant later that night.
