A former police officer has said that police could have handled the Rayshard Brooks case better without killing him and she narrated how she handled a similar incident when she was a police officer.
Brooks, 27, died after he was shot twice in the back on Friday, June 12, outside an Atlanta’s Wendy’s, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said in a statement. Police had been summoned there on a report of a man sleeping in his car in the drive-through. When the Atlanta police officer arrived, things escalated and Brooks was shot dead.
Authorities in Georgia ruled on Sunday that Brooks’ death was a homicide.
The mayor of Atlanta agrees with that. On Monday, she called Brooks’ death a murder.
Also, experts say the confrontation with police on Friday night could have been handled differently.
Narrating how she handled a similar situation in the past, Beth P tweeted: “I’m sure I will get savaged once again for this, but fuck it. As a former police officer – here is how I handled a situation with a drunk in a parking lot.
“While on routine patrol on night shift, I observed a man barfing out of the door of his car, which was parked behind a bar that had just closed for the night. I could have sat in my cruiser near the exit to the lot and waited for him to pull out onto the street, and arrest him for drunk driving.
“Instead, I approached him and asked him if he was okay. He was clearly drunk – reeked of alcohol. I told him I couldn’t let him drive home like that and asked him if there was anyone I could call to pick him up. He said no. I offered him a choice.
“I said I could arrest him when he drove away, or he could give me his keys and sleep it off. I told him I would check on him during the night and wake him up in the morning and give him back his keys. He gave me his keys without hesitation. I checked on him during the night.
“In the morning I took him coffee and orange juice, woke him up, and gave him back his keys and thanked him for cooperating with me. The goal was to keep him from driving drunk, not pad my arrest statistics. I never regretted that for a moment. It was the best way to handle it.
“You can scoff, not believe me, whatever. I don’t care. Shooting a drunk man in the back is horrifying. This kind of thing must stop.”
