Worked for Janet Reno.

Win-win But in this case, we have a third issue. The DA is in a lot worse trouble than Nifong was with an election coming up. Win, lose, or draw, he’s coating himself with Teflon.

I read your blog post. I have also watched the videos multiple times.

You are taking issue with the officer’s conduct in the questioning, stating that Rolfe clearly harrassed Brooks. Unless the harassing behavior happened in the edited time (something I doubt, else it would not have been edited out; because it seems to be edited by a pro-Brooks individual as opposed to a pro-police individual), there was nothing about Rolfe’s questioning that was harassing.

In your blog post you mention a number of things:

1)Your own experience in Wichita.

2)The fact that Brooks’ BAC would have been legal a few years ago.

3)That Brooks was parked and trying to sleep it off.

4)That you believe the 20 minutes of questioning and field sobriety testing was harassing.

As to #1, I don’t know you, don’t know what happened and only have your description of the Wichita events. Plausible. Don’t know. But your experience there is only relevent here in that it makes you biased. Rolfe was not the officer in Wichita. You are not Brooks.

#2- Irrelevant because that is not what the law says now.

#3- What you either were not aware of, or that you ignored (I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume unaware) is that Brooks hadn’t just parked to sleep it off. His car was in park, still running while it was blocking the drive-thru lane of the Wendy’s. Brooks was asleep there.

Also, it depends on the states and municipalities, but in many (and I am not aware of Georgia or Atlanta) it is still illegal to be drunk behind the wheel of a parked car. In some it depends on the key being in the ignition or not. In some the car does not have to be ‘on’ at all. But in Brooks’ case, it easy enough to see from the video that he had stopped the car and fallen asleep while blocking the drive-thru, which is why the police were called.

Not only is your point #3 irrelevant but it doesn’t appear that Brooks was doing as you implied: Parking his car to sleep off his drunkenness.

#4- 20 minutes of questioning is really not much time at all in the questioning of DUI. Often, a road stop for speeding or other traffic violation can take 10-15 minuets depending on numerous factors*. Officer Brosnan was not certified to make the DUI call, and he had to wait until Rolfe arrived, who was certified. Additionally, something that you probably don’t realize is that while the officer is questioning (“harrassing” in your words) there are likely warrant checks and such being performed. These all take time and do not happen near instantaneously like in the TVs and movies.

Additionally, if you have ever had to try and speak with or question someone who is intoxicated, the conversation can often travels in circles. My thought is, without being able to get inside the mind of Brosnan and Rolfe, that they spent that time trying to get Brooks to agree to the breathalyzer. They could have made the arrest before that but it looks to me like they wanted his consent for the test, helping to insure his conviction on the DUI later.

Watching the videos, there was nothing unprofessional that I saw in their interactions with Brooks. In fact, I thought Rolfe did a good job in that as soon as he said that Brooks was under arrest, he went to handcuff him. Many officers delay the handcuffing which almost always ends up making the situation worse for all involved. It gives the person time to think about what is happening and decide to fight. No one wants that. As we see from the video, people often still fight anyway and the results are horrible.

If there was anything I took issue with, it was Officer Brosnan allowing Brooks to drive his car to a parking spot. He smelled alcohol and had a pretty good idea he was drunk. Letting him drive the car again was a bad idea but in this case, wasn’t really the crux of the issue.

*How busy the dispatch is, how backed up other officers or supervisors are, etc.

All of that being said :

During the Vietnam War, US forces committed a massacre at Mi Lai. At first the incident was covered up, but eventually charges were brought against both the Platoon Leader involved, and against his Company Commander.

The Company Commander, a man named Ernest Medina, was not actually present on the scene and was not accused of ordering the massacre. Even so, it seems self-evident that he should have taken some kind of action after it occurred, which he failed to do. Therefore a charge of dereliction of duty would seem appropriate.

Instead he was charged with murder, based on the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness. This was well short of the standard of proof required by military law, since shooting people on a battlefield is not in and of itself a crime. Even if the prosecution could prove that Medina had shot someone, they’d still need to prove that the victim was not a legitimate target and that Medina knew that.

Which raises the question of why they opted to use a charge which they couldn’t prove, and which they had to KNOW that they couldn’t prove.

Possibly because they didn’t really want him to be convicted ?

And BTW… he wasn’t.

Here is your quote that reveals you to be a fool:

“The policeman’s behavior, which does not appear to be racist, does set the stage for the tragedy.”

Mr Brooks chose to drive drunk, fight with the police, take one of the policeman’s tazers, fire that tazer at the officer who shot him, and somehow the officer started the chain of events? Did the officer force Mr Brooks to drink and drive too? Could be, it isn’t on video.

Who will hold you accountable for your malicious stupidity?

Let go of the moderator’s leg.

There are too many terrible cops out there. It is time to hold them accountable.

GOP legislators never miss an opportunity to waste time, waste effort, and irritate their voters in service to fashion.

https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/06/17/cant-order-police-officers-die-politics/

You Can’t Order Police Officers To Die For Your Politics
JAZZ SHAWPosted at 4:31 pm on June 17, 2020

Now that the Senate GOP has begun the process of rolling out their own version of a “police reform” bill, predictable partisan fights are already breaking out. One of the major bones of contention is the idea that the bill would “discourage” the use of chokeholds by the cops during confrontations with non-compliant, disruptive or violent suspects.
…
Suggesting that Congress can simply roll out some new rules about a crisis situation where the cops wind up in a physical and potentially deadly confrontation with a subject is magical thinking. First of all, you’re talking about a vanishingly rare event for the most part. I mentioned these statistics in a previous article, but they bear repeating. …
Coming from a family with more than our fair share of cops, the attitude I detect from some of these Democrats is simply insulting.
…
They would prefer to see and respond to no crimes and have a peaceful community. And if they are called on to respond to an incident, they would like it resolved calmly. They want to go home to their families that night every bit as much as you do.

But sometimes officers encounter a criminal who will never comply with orders and will either flee or get into an altercation with the cops. As we’ve seen from too many witness videos by now (such as the Rayshard Brooks shooting), things can go from boring and normal to violent and potentially deadly in under a second. Yes, there needs to be plenty of training in how to respond. And there should be standard practices in place so every officer knows the best way to handle such an incident, ensuring the greatest chance that the episode will be resolved with nobody getting hurt. But human nature is a funny thing, and it’s not always going to work out the way you would like.

There may come a time in any officer’s career where their life will be literally on the line with almost no time to respond. At close quarters, a chokehold may turn out to be the only viable (and hopefully nonlethal) option. At a distance against an armed assailant, they may have to draw and potentially use their firearm. And they don’t need to be worrying about whether they’re going to lose their job over it. …Threatening to punish them if they don’t conform to your ideas (or those of your most rabid supporters) of how they should save their own lives demonstrates a lack of moral fiber on the part of our elected officials.

We ask a lot of our police officers. Probably too much in some cases. With the exception of a few rotten apples we need to weed out quickly and aggressively, they are all out there on the front lines fighting so you can have a peaceful life under the rule of order and exercise all of your freedoms. Seeking to exert this sort of granular control over them from on high is offensive. And if a lot of them start walking off the job after this I certainly couldn’t blame them.

It’s like the controversy over the restrictive ROEs Congress and Presidents often mandate for the military when political reasons take precedence over supporting the troops in doing the job that Congress and Presidents sent them out to do.