Prosecutors have charged former Atlanta police
officer Garrett Rolfe with 11 counts, including
felony murder, for the shooting death of 27-year-old
Rayshard Brooks, who he shot twice in the
back outside a Wendy’s restaurant June 12th.
Meanwhile, new video has emerged of Rayshard
Brooks speaking in his own words about his
struggles with the criminal justice system.
The experience of being locked up in prison,
he says, left him deep in debt and struggling to pay
court fees and restitution — even as employers 
turned him away due to his criminal record.
Brooks spoke in February with the group Reconnect.
I just feel like some of the system could
look at us as individuals — we do have lives,
where it’s just a mistake we made
— and not just do us as if we are animals.
I think it’s really sort of eerie to hear
Rayshard in his own voice talk about not being
treated like an animal, and then to see sort
of these images and to, you know, see the
video from the very beginning.
I mean, in so many ways, what we’re seeing
with these charges is a deep sort of recognition
of the power of a movement, the power of a
movement to push and exact consequences.
But we have to recognize, at the end of the
day, we have to raise the floor on what’s
acceptable, and we also have to keep a deep
vision for what human rights looks like.
And I do think that, you know, in these states
that have failed to prosecute police time
and time again, have failed to put laws in
place to hold police accountable, that instead
of calling a tow truck, we call police — are
now sort of putting things in place like the
death penalty, which is one of the most inhumane
sort of exercises of how we sort of move towards
consequences and punishment in this country.
And so, I think that all of this — right?
— is important in terms of getting justice
for the family, and at the same time, we have
to continue to keep our eye on all the ways
that the system realigns itself, protects
itself, and really hear those sort of words
of Rayshard Brooks about being treated like
an animal, and recognize that there are so
many others that are continuing to be treated
like animals,
enemy combatants in their own 
neighborhoods, by police.
