The former Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks was accused of covering up an earlier shooting in which he and other officers had been involved.
Garrett Rolfe was fired by the Atlanta police department after shooting Brooks in the back as he fled from a drunken driving arrest at a Wendy's drive-through, and court documents show he and two other officers apparently covered up an August 2015 shooting, reported The Guardian.
Role and two other officers opened fire on stolen truck suspect Jermaine Harris, who is Black, after he rammed a police vehicle, but did not report the shooting.
Harris was struck once and suffered a collapsed lung, but he survived and later pleaded guilty to charges including theft, property damage, fleeing arrest and damaging a police vehicle.
The judge who oversaw the case called it a "disaster" and called for an investigation.
“None of the police put in the report that they shot the man – none of them," wrote Judge Doris Downs, "and they sent him to Grady [Memorial Hospital] with collapsed lungs and everything, and the report doesn’t mention it."
She suggested state and federal authorities investigate, but it's not clear whether any further action was taken and Downs could not be reached for comment.
“I am ethically going to be required to turn all of them in,” she wrote in 2016. “What the police did was wrong, and they will have to answer for what they did.”
A spokesperson said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation never investigated the Harris shooting, and a personnel file released by Atlanta police does not show any disciplinary action against Rolfe in the shooting -- which was listed only as a “firearm discharge.”
Harris warned Downs in a letter from jail that the public would not be safe as long as Rolfe and the other two officers remained on patrol.
“Not only have I been wronged, but society as well [has been wronged] by allowing this officer to continue to patrol our streets of Metro Atlanta,” Harris wrote.
