Rayshard Brooks: Atlanta police release body cam footage of Wendy’s shooting

Brooks, 27, was compliant with officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan before scuffle and subsequent shooting.

Rayshard Brooks complies with Atlanta police during DUI check. (Photo: Atlanta Police Department/CBS46 Atlanta)

The Atlanta Police Department has released over an hour of body camera footage in the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks in a Wendy’s parking lot on Friday night.

The video starts off with officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan responding to a call made at the fast-food restaurant at approximately 10:30 p.m. after Brooks had allegedly fallen asleep at the wheel of his vehicle at the Wendy’s drive-thru.

Brosnan tells Rolfe that when he arrived on the scene, he woke up a sleeping Brooks and asked him to pull over to a parking spot on the lot. The officers then approached Brooks who was sitting in his vehicle.

READ MORE: Cousin of Rayshard Brooks says he thought Atlanta was better than this

Brooks claimed he did not drive himself to the restaurant but was instead dropped off by a friend who was staying at a nearby hotel. When the officers asked him how the car he was sitting in had made it to the restaurant, Brooks said it had already been there when he was dropped off.

He told cops he did not remember the officer waking him up and being pulled off the drive-thru line to park his car.

“I’m sorry … I just got something to eat. I went to visit my mother’s gravesite. I’m not causing any problems,” Brooks said.

WARNING: This video contains graphic content that may be triggering for viewers.

When officers asked Brooks where he was, however, he apparently failed to realize that he was in Atlanta and not in Forest Park, Georgia, where he thought he was located. The officers then asked Brooks to step out of the vehicle and began to pat him down and administer a sobriety test.

Throughout the entire exchange up until this point, Brooks was compliant and often referred to the officers as “sir.”

After the sobriety test, which Brooks appeared to get through without any glaring signs of incapacity, he assured the officers that he was OK to drive to wherever he was staying for the night. When officers asked him how much he had been drinking, Brooks said he only had a drink and a half.

Things took a turn after police administered a breathalyzer and attempted to put Brooks in handcuffs. As previously reported by theGrio, Brooks began to wrestle with officers and attempted to evade arrest.

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Rolfe’s body camera footage did not capture the scuffle and subsequent fatal shooting because it had apparently dropped to the ground during the struggle, however, it was caught on surveillance video released by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Saturday and on a witness’s camera phone.

In addition to body camera footage released by APD, there was also a dashcam video released.

WARNING: This video contains graphic content that may be triggering for viewers.

After the shooting, an irate witness can be seen and heard yelling at cops over Brooks’ death. “He was unarmed! What the f**k?!” the man said. “I saw ya’ll talking to him for 20 minutes. Unarmed! Non-violent! He did nothing wrong with how he conducted himself whatsoever and you pull a f**king gun, dude?!”

READ MORE: Atlanta police chief resigns after fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks

“I feel like both of your careers are definitely done because you just shot a man for no reason,” the witness added.

After other officers and first responders arrived on the scene, officer Rolfe tells another officer on the scene that he was the one who shot Brooks. Rolfe asks if he can call a representative, to which he does, and then proceeds to recount his story to a responding officer recording an incident report.

The body camera ends with Rolfe returning to the police headquarters.

As theGrio reported Saturday night, Rolfe was terminated from his job and officer Brosnan was placed on administrative duty.

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