Officer charged in Rayshard Brooks death asks for change to bond conditions
By Kate Brumback article
Officer Garrett Rolfe gives Rayshard Brooks a sobriety test moments before his deadly shooting in southwest Atlanta on June 12, 2020.
(Atlanta Police Department)
ATLANTA - After his firing by the Atlanta police department was reversed last week, the officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks is asking a judge to change the conditions of his bond as criminal charges against him remain pending.
Garrett Rolfe faces charges including murder in the June 2020 shooting of the 27-year-old Black man. When she set a $500,000 bond for Rolfe last year, a judge imposed a number of conditions, including wearing an ankle monitor, complying with a curfew, not possessing any guns and having no contact with Atlanta police officers.
By Richard Fausset
May 7, 2021, 5:43 p.m. ET
ATLANTA At a news conference in which she fought to hold back tears, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta said on Friday that there was no single reason for her abrupt and dramatic decision not to run for a second term.…
But the most serious political threat that emerged for Ms. Bottoms in recent months was a phenomenon she had previously described as the “Covid crime wave.” Like many other American cities, Atlanta is struggling with a spike in violent crime, including a 58 percent increase in homicides last year the likely result, researchers say, of the pandemic’s strain on at-risk populations, as well as institutions like courts and police departments.
(AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
My colleague Shipwreckedcrew reported yesterday on the recent reinstatement of fired police officer Garrett Rolfe to the Atlanta PD.
The decision to reinstate Rolfe, who was fired in the aftermath of the officer-involved shooting death of Rayshard Brooks in a Wendy’s parking lot last June, was made by Atlanta’s Civil Service Board, which ruled that Rolfe’s employment was terminated by former Atlanta police chief Erika Shields without him being given the benefit of due process.
Rolfe had sued the city of Atlanta over the issue in August.
In the aftermath of Brooks’ shooting death, riots broke out at the Wendy’s and elsewhere. The restaurant was destroyed and rioters made its parking lot a “home base” of sorts for their occupation over the next several weeks, which led to the fatal shooting of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner, who was killed after rioters opened fire on a car that made a wrong turn near the Wendy’s parking lot in early July
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‘It Is Time to Pass the Baton’: Atlanta Mayor Won’t Seek Re-Election
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta rattled off a list of grinding municipal crises on Friday, saying there was not a specific reason she decided not to seek re-election.
In the same way that it was very clear to me, almost five years ago, that I should run for mayor of Atlanta, it is abundantly clear to me today that it is time to pass the baton on to someone else. Three months into our term, there was the biggest cyberattack in the history of a municipality in America. A federal investigation that seemed to literally suck the air out of City Hall, into the previous administration. There was last summer, there was a pandemic, there was a social justice movement, there was a madman in the White House. And at every turn, at every opportunity, this city rose above, and I am so proud of that. I don’t know what’s next for me personally and for our family. But what I do know is that this is a decisio