A chief of police and a patrolman in Hamilton, Georgia, are no longer in office after footage of body cameras mixed with racial epithets and profanity emerged from them discussing protests that erupted in the summer after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
Police chief Gene Allmond resigned from the Hamilton Police Department last week, while patrolman John Brooks was fired, Buddy Walker, assistant to Hamilton Mayor Julie Brown, confirmed to Fox News on Monday.
The footage from the camera provided to Fox News appeared to show that the men were outside the Hamilton Police Department building. Walker said the video was recorded in June, when Allmond and Brooks were preparing to respond to a Black Lives Matter rally in Town Square. The small event would have remained peaceful.
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In the video, Allmond and John Brooks discussed the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks, a black man who first aimed a Taser at police outside a Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta, as well as the violent demonstrations that followed after they left the building burned to the ground.
One of the men, heard off camera, used the N word to describe Rayshard Brooks, as well as Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. He also mentioned Stacey Abrams. The other commented that his family never had slaves before suggesting that the black population receives food and “they don’t want to work”.
A screenshot of the body camera footage in June. (Hamilton City)
“We wanted them to leave the police because we don’t want that kind of ugliness here in Hamilton,” Mayor Brown told WRBL. “Race, I don’t think it was a problem here. At least it wasn’t the 37 years I’m here, and we just didn’t want that, especially now that we want more unity. The whole country needs more unity, we need to heal, so we didn’t want anything to stop it. “
Walker told Fox News that patrolman Brooks was asked during a City Council meeting why the officers were not using body cameras and he replied that they were not working properly. The cameras were then delivered to the city, and a city official testing a device found that there was data stored on it.
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Exactly a week ago, on January 25, the employee alerted Walker, who then watched the footage with Mayor Pro Tem Farley in his office. They then brought the video to the attention of the mayor, city council and city attorney Ron Iddins, Walker said.
The police department’s voicemail box was not set up and did not accept messages when Fox News tried to contact him by phone on Monday.
Iddins said that no one on the council could watch the filming entirely because of “how ugly it gets”.
“After reviewing the footage, I think it speaks for itself. The city, its failure to act at that time and point would have been inexplicable,” Iddins told WRBL. “It had to be done.”
Separate images from the body camera depicting the Rayshard Brooks shooting showed that officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan appeared to be having a quiet conversation for more than 40 minutes with Brooks, who was supposedly drunk and fell asleep at the wheel on the drive-thru.
When the police tried to handcuff him, there was a fight and Brooks grabbed a Taser from a policeman and pointed it at them. That’s when the video showed that Rolfe shot him. Both officers were charged with Brooks’s death. Protesters set fire to Wendy’s shortly thereafter.
Atlanta police chief Erika Shields resigned and Rolfe was fired after the incident.
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Last week, the newly elected Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, requested in a letter to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr that the case against Rolfe be transferred to another prosecutor, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. .
Sunday would be Rayshard Brooks’ 28th birthday, and the family blew balloons in his memory at the location of former Wendy’s, WSB-TV reported.