“Sleeping in a drive-thru must not end in death”

Being under the national spotlight, as we keep seeing, doesn’t mean that police officers are necessarily going to start preferring de-escalation to potentially deadly escalation:

A 27-year-old man was shot and killed by Atlanta police Friday evening during a struggle in a Wendy’s drive-thru line that was captured on video.

By Saturday afternoon, Police Chief Erika Shields had resigned her position and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms called for the officer who fired the fatal shots to be terminated. 

The incident began about 10:30 p.m. outside the fast food chain on University Avenue, GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles said. 

Officers were called to the restaurant after receiving a complaint about a man asleep in his vehicle, which forced other customers to go around his car to get their food at the window. The man, Atlanta resident Rayshard Brooks, was given a field sobriety test, which he reportedly failed, according to the GBI.

“After failing the test, the officers attempted to place the male subject into custody,” Miles said. “During the arrest, the male subject resisted and a struggle ensued. The officer deployed a Taser.”

According to police, Brooks managed to take the Taser away from the officer before being shot. He was taken to the hospital where he later died, Miles said.

Cellphone video captured by a Wendy’s customer appears to show two officers struggling with Brooks in the parking lot. He appeared to be running away from them when he was fatally shot.

There is simply no defense for killing a suspect who starts and ends an encounter with police not threatening anybody. Shields’s resignation is a good first step but only that.