The Black Lives Matter movement sure seems to have brought the crybaby out of cops...the po’-little-tink-tink out of police...the “woe is me” out of wack-ass officers. You would think that black people were asking for something impractical like the public tarring and feathering of everyone who wears a badge. Yet, our request is simple: stop killing us. Stop with the extrajudicial executions of black people who pose no immediate threat to anyone’s lives and prosecute the cops who continue to engage in the practice.
Just hours after it was announced that former officer Garrett Rolfe will be facing nearly a dozen criminal charges, including felony murder for fatally shooting Rayshard Brooks, a number of Atlanta police officers reportedly called in sick just before their shifts were supposed to start in an apparent protest against a fellow cop being held accountable for his actions.
The Washington Post reported that on Wednesday night, the Atlanta Police Department was struggling to cover the shifts of the “larger-than-normal number of absent officers.” Vince Champion, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers spoke to NBC News confirming that the officers did call out in protest of Rolfe being charged but he said it wasn’t an organized effort.
“This is not an organized thing, it’s not a blue flu, it’s not a strike, it’s nothing like that,” Champion said. “What it actually is is officers protesting that they’ve had enough and they don’t want to deal with it any longer.”
The news comes just days after it was reported that a number of Minneapolis police officers resigned or walked off of the job after they’d gotten their “Back the Blue” Underoos all in a bunch because protests over systemic racism and police brutality made them feel unappreciated and unsafe. (Which is only slightly less ridiculous than the officer who had a Karen-apocalyptic meltdown over McDonald’s fucking up her order and implying she was targeted...by fast-food workers because she’s a cop.)
Of course, a Minneapolis police spokesman said there was no reason to think the number of resigning officers “are so great that it’s going to be problematic,” and it’s no different in Atlanta where Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms attempted to reassure citizens that the city still has plenty of cops and that the streets are still reasonably safe.
“We do have enough officers to cover us through the night,” Bottoms told CNN. “Our streets won’t be any less safe because of the number of officers who called out.”
“We have other partners across the metropolitan area, including assistance from the state and from the county and from other jurisdictions,” she continued. “So, we will be fine.”
The APD has also been trying to assure people they have enough officers as well as shut down rumors of a massive and organized police walkout.
“Earlier suggestions that multiple officers from each zone had walked off the job were inaccurate,” the department tweeted. “The department is experiencing a higher than usual number of call outs with the incoming shift. We have enough resources to maintain operations & remain able to respond to incidents.”