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ACCOUNTABILITY: Consider this case

| June 26, 2020 1:00 AM

Re: “Defunding police” In the article it’s asked: “How different could that situation have been…”

Everyone seems to want to ignore that Mr. Brooks was out on parole (due to COVID) for felonious beating and endangering his children, with a prior conviction for DUI, and a considerable arrest record. He drove while intoxicated, with a BAL of .108 at the time of his arrest, endangering the public, before passing out behind the wheel at the drive-through, passing out again after the Wendy’s employee tried to wake him before calling 911.

Mr. Brooks was about to become a three-time loser on a parole violation — that’s when, and likely why he started to resist arrest and fight the officers.

This was his latest, and last, bad choice — in a long list of bad choices that he chose to make over a number of years.

The public had every right to expect that Rayshard be arrested for his own poor judgment/choices, not given an Uber/allowed to walk home, after all the people he put at risk of injury or death. If he had been adult enough and truly cared about his family to face up to the consequences of his bad choices, Mr. Brooks would still be alive today.

If anybody else “should be held accountable” it’s the people who served him the alcohol and had been drinking with him — and let him drive anyway. That’s who “executed” Rayshard, not the cop, This was all preventable.

BRIAN WELCH

Athol