The police chief of the American city of Atlanta resigned after an officer shot and killed a black man while he was trying to arrest him, said the mayor on Saturday amid protests in the country against racism and police violence.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was presented as a potential running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, said that Chief Erika Shields had worked for the Atlanta Police Service for more than two decades.
“Because of his wish that Atlanta be a model of what meaningful reform should look like across the country, Chief Shields offered to step down immediately as chief of police,” said the mayor in comments. televised.
The shooting comes as the United States faces a historic toll of systemic racism, with mass civil unrest triggered by the May 25 murder of an unarmed African American man, George Floyd, while he was in police custody.
Floyd died after a white Minneapolis policeman knelt on the neck for almost nine minutes.
The protests that spread first in the country and then around the world in the weeks that followed forced a conversation about the aftermath of slavery, colonialism and white violence against people of color, as well as on the militarization of the police in America.
The Atlanta victim, identified by police as Rayshard Brooks, 27, was killed Friday night.
He fell asleep in his car in a fast food restaurant and employees called the police to complain that he was blocking other customers, an official report said.
He failed a sobriety test and resisted when police tried to arrest him, said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The surveillance video showed “that during a physical fight with officers, Brooks got one of the agent’s Tasers and started to flee,” the report continued.
“The officers chased Brooks on foot and during the chase, Brooks turned around and pointed the Taser at the officer. The officer pulled his gun, hitting Brooks,” said the statement.
Brooks was taken to hospital but died after an operation, he added, adding that an officer had been injured.
Bottoms, who spoke after Atlanta protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against Brooks’ death, said the officer who killed him had been dismissed.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
