NO ACCOUNTABILITY

Cop Who Killed Rayshard Brooks Was Accused of Cover-Up Attempt in Previous Shooting of Black Man

Garret Rolfe and two other officers opened fire on a Black man who had stolen a truck, but did not mention the shooting in their police reports.

The police officer who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks in an Atlanta Wendy’s parking lot has been accused of covering up a 2015 shooting he was involved in with two other officers. Garret Rolfe, who was fired Friday after killing Brooks, had opened fire alongside two other officers against Jackie Jermaine Harris after the cops caught Harris driving a stolen truck. Harris, who is Black, survived the incident, but was sent to the hospital with a collapsed lung after being struck by one of the shots. Harris later pleaded guilty to theft, property damage, fleeing arrest, and damaging a police vehicle. Rolfe and the other officers did not include in their police reports that they opened fire on Harris, Judge Doris L. Downs said during a 2016 court hearing. “None of the police put in the report that they shot the man—none of them. And they sent him to Grady [Memorial Hospital] with collapsed lungs and everything, and the report doesn’t mention it,” Downs said in 2016. “I am ethically going to be required to turn all of them in,” she said, adding that perhaps state and federal authorities should get involved. It is unclear if action was taken.