ATLANTA — A former Atlanta police officer was charged on Wednesday with murder and aggravated assault in the killing last week of a black motorist outside a fast-food restaurant, and prosecutors revealed chilling new details of the late-night encounter, including that the officer kicked the dying man after shooting him twice in the back.
The former officer, Garrett Rolfe, faces a total of 11 charges in connection with the death of the motorist, Rayshard Brooks. The shooting, which was captured on a widely circulated video, has prompted the resignation of Atlanta’s police chief and further inflamed the tensions over race and policing that are roiling the nation.
At a news conference on Wednesday to announce the charges, prosecutors said that Mr. Rolfe declared, “I got him,” after firing the fatal shots at Mr. Brooks. Mr. Rolfe kicked the victim, prosecutors said, while his partner stood on the fatally wounded man’s shoulder.
Mr. Rolfe and his partner, Devin Brosnan, both of whom are white, then failed to render aid for more than two minutes, said Paul L. Howard Jr., the Fulton County district attorney.
Officer Brosnan, who remains on the police force on administrative duty, was charged with three counts, including aggravated assault and violations of oath, Mr. Howard said, adding that Officer Brosnan is cooperating with prosecutors in the investigation.
The killing took place on Friday night, after the police were called to a Wendy’s restaurant where Mr. Brooks, 27, had fallen asleep in his car in the drive-through line, the authorities said.
In announcing the charges against the officers, Mr. Howard said that “Mr. Brooks never presented himself as a threat.” In fact, while Mr. Brooks appeared “slightly impaired,” Mr. Howard said, “his demeanor during this incident was almost jovial.”
Then, after a long interaction that was “cordial and cooperative,” Mr. Brooks failed a sobriety test and the officers began to arrest him, prompting Mr. Brooks to tussle with them, grab one of their Tasers and bolt.
“For 41 minutes and 17 seconds, he followed their instructions, he answered questions,” Mr. Howard said, adding that Mr. Brooks was not informed that he would be arrested for driving under the influence, a violation of the Police Department’s policy.
Officials from the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, the union representing Atlanta officers, denounced the charges against both officers as premature and politically motivated, as Mr. Howard is locked in a tight re-election race. They said prosecutors should have waited until the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is leading an investigation into the shooting, announces its findings.
The G.B.I. said in a statement on Wednesday that the agency had not been consulted by prosecutors before they brought the charges. “Although we have made significant progress in the case,” the G.B.I. said, “we have not completed our work.”
Shortly after the charges were announced, Mr. Brooks’s family said they appreciated the quick response by prosecutors, but that they were also anguished as they imagined the pain and cruelty Mr. Brooks faced after falling to the ground.
“I was told as a kid that you don’t kick a man when he’s down,” Justin Miller, a lawyer representing the family, said during a news conference on Wednesday. “What you saw and what we all saw is one officer standing on a man who is dying, standing on top of him, and then the other officer literally kicking him while he’s on the ground dying.”
President Trump defended Mr. Rolfe in a televised interview Wednesday evening.
“You can’t resist a police officer, and if you have a disagreement, you have to take it up after the fact,” Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity. “It was out of control — the whole situation was out of control.”
“I hope he gets a fair shake,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rolfe, “because police have not been treated fairly in our country.”
A spokesman for the Atlanta police said that an unusually high number of officers called in sick and did not report to work night shifts on Wednesday after the charges were announced.
Within 24 hours of the shooting of Mr. Brooks, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said that she did not believe it was justified, leading to Mr. Rolfe’s prompt firing and the resignation of the city’s police chief, Erika Shields.
But as protesters swarmed the streets with renewed intensity, including burning the Wendy’s where the shooting took place, demands swelled to bring criminal charges against the officers.
Mr. Brooks’s name was soon invoked in demonstrations across the country alongside other African-American people who died in violent encounters with the police, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Rashad Robinson, president of the civil rights advocacy group Color of Change, said charges were largely possible because of the “millions of people who protested all over the country for justice.”
Legal experts said that the charges came surprisingly quick, and were significant for their severity, with punishment that could extend to life in prison or even the death penalty if Mr. Rolfe is convicted.
“These are hefty, hefty charges,” said Jimmy Gurulé, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a former federal and state prosecutor.
The swiftness, he said, reflected a sense of urgency fueled by recent protests and broader efforts to shine a light on shortcomings in the criminal justice system.
“There’s a realization that these aren’t simply unrelated cases of police brutality,” Professor Gurulé said. “I think there’s an awareness of a serious problem with policing in this country.”
Prosecutors said they benefited from videos and photographs that clearly detailed the shooting and the interaction between Mr. Brooks and the officers, including videos taken by bystanders and footage from the officers’ body and dashboard cameras.
Mr. Howard said he also heard from witnesses, including one man, Melvin Evans, whose sport utility vehicle was hit by one of the officer’s bullets.
Mr. Evans, who had traveled to Atlanta from Memphis, was sitting with his girlfriend and a friend while the confrontation unfolded. He said they ducked after the officer opened fire.
“He was, like, 10 feet away from the truck,” Mr. Evans said of Mr. Brooks. “It was that close.”
Mr. Rolfe had disciplinary issues in the past, including a written reprimand in 2016 for another use-of-force incident involving a firearm, according to records released by the Atlanta Police Department. The disciplinary history does not include details of that case, nor those of a number of other episodes in which Mr. Rolfe was involved since his hiring in 2013.
Among the other cases were four citizen complaints, none of which resulted in disciplinary action, and five vehicle accidents, which led to an “oral admonishment” in 2014 and a written reprimand in 2018.
Mr. Rolfe’s record also includes an incident in August 2015 involving the discharge of a firearm, but there is no record of any disciplinary action taken in that case.
Before Mr. Brooks’s death, Officer Brosnan had not faced any disciplinary actions, according to the department.
The law office representing Officer Brosnan issued a statement Wednesday, saying that while the officer was cooperating with the Fulton County prosecutors’ investigation, he had not agreed to testify against Mr. Rolfe or to plead guilty to any charges.
“This was not a rush to judgment — this was a rush to misjudgment,” the firm, Garland, Samuel & Loeb, said in its statement.
During the struggle between Mr. Brooks and the officers, the statement said, Officer Brosnan pulled out his Taser and warned Mr. Brooks to stop resisting, “or he would be tased.” The statement said Mr. Brooks instead took the Taser and used it on Officer Brosnan, who hit his head on the pavement and was later found to have a concussion.
The statement also said that Mr. Rolfe ran to his car to get medical equipment for Mr. Brooks within “less than a minute.”
Videos of the confrontation between Mr. Brooks and the officers began circulating in a moment when Atlanta was already gripped by boiling discontent over the racial biases and discriminatory practices that bleed into virtually every facet of life for African-Americans.
As protests were touched off across the country by the death of Mr. Floyd, amid a pandemic that has disproportionately affected African-Americans, the demonstrations in Atlanta were especially heated.
Anger with the Atlanta Police Department deepened after a live television broadcast during one night of protests captured a scene of officers swarming two college students in a car, physically pulling a woman out of the passenger seat and firing a Taser at a man in the driver’s seat.
A day after that incident, Ms. Bottoms and Ms. Shields condemned the officers’ actions, announcing that two had been fired and three had been assigned to desk duty. This week, Ms. Bottoms, who is black, announced a series of measures aimed at overhauling the Police Department, including how and when officers are allowed to use deadly force.
Will Wright contributed reporting from Jersey City, N.J., and Michael Crowley from Amherst, Mass.
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