Garrett Rolfe murder charge in Rayshard Brooks killing prompts Atlanta police ‘blue flu’

Atlanta was hit by a bad case of the “blue flu” Wednesday evening.

The Atlanta Police Department acknowledged that many officers were not reporting for duty, the evening after a policeman was charged with capital murder for shooting Rayshard Brooks, a fleeing felon who’d grabbed his Taser and fired it.

“The department is experiencing a higher than usual number of call outs with the incoming shift,” the department said, though it insisted there had been no mass walkout, as had been reported.

“We have enough resources to maintain operations & remain able to respond to incidents,” the department wrote on its Twitter feed.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked both the Atlanta police and a local union representative the number of officers involved, but did not get answers.

Vince Champion, Southeast regional director for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, told the AJC there were walkouts, though he wasn’t sure in which precincts.

“There are officers walking off,” he said Wednesday evening. “There are officers saying they are not going to leave the precinct unless to help another officer. Some are walking off and sitting in their personal vehicles.”

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms acknowledged in a Wednesday evening interview on CNN that morale had collapsed within the department.

“Across the country, morale is down with police departments, and I think ours is down tenfold,” she said.

Earlier on Wednesday, District Attorney Paul Howard announced that Garrett Rolfe, who already has been fired from the department, would face 11 criminal charges, including felony murder.

The effect of such charges, according to Mr. Champion, came home to roost this evening when the Atlanta PD tried to get back-up support from adjacent law enforcement agencies and got refused.

“Why would you put your officer in Fulton County and take the chance of this happening?” Mr. Champion said. “You have an officer who just heard what Paul Howard said, saying [Mr. Rolfe] going to be in prison for the rest of his life or put to death.”