Reports surfaced on Wednesday night that many Atlanta police officers, furious that Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced that the police officer who shot Rayshard Brooks last week was charged with felony murder, didn’t report for their shifts. The rumors of police officers walking off the job is reminiscent of a scene roughly 39 years ago.
In December 1981, police officers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, went on a 16-hour strike after two police officers were shot and killed by a black teenager, and a Milwaukee alderman stated, “The person could have suspected that the police were simply going to kill him, and because of that, he might have acted out of fear rather than out of any kind of sensible surrender to the police.”
Following the comment, roughly 2,200 police officers walked out, according to UPI.
“Police Association President Robert Kliesmet called the walkout and then said he would ask the officers to stay out until the Common Council considered a list of demands that would provide safer working conditions,” UPI reported, adding that Kliesmet said Alderman Roy Nabors’ comments “were the straw that broke the camel’s back” in reference to incidents in which police had been accused of brutality and unnecessary force.
A spokesman for the police association stated, “The officers just don’t know where to go anymore. This is causing so much confusion to our men on the street, they don’t know what proper action to take any more.”
As The Marshall Project notes:
Controversy over police conduct and reform had been simmering in Milwaukee for months. Three cop-involved deaths that year – of a black man in police custody, a businessman accosted during a traffic chase, and a nightclub dancer – had raised concern about police brutality and inflamed tensions between law enforcement and the public. The police union president called one Milwaukee district attorney a “persecutor” for investigating misconduct.
When the police announced they were striking, Milwaukee Mayor Henry Maier issued a declaration of emergency permitting him to impose a curfew if there were no law enforcement, as The New York Times noted.
Nabors made his remarks regarding the fatal shooting of Officers John Machjewski, 24, and Charles Mehlberg, 25, by Robert Lee Collins, 19. Collins, according to the police, had a lengthy record. Nabors said, “The person could have suspected that the police were simply going to kill him, and because of that, he might have acted out of fear rather than out of any kind of sensible surrender to the police. I think anytime that a police officer approaches a person in the black community there is that state of panic.”
About 200 deputies were sent from the Milwaukee Sheriff’s Office to aid in law enforcement.
Related: WATCH: Black Georgia Sheriff Tells CNN: Shooting Of Rayshard Brooks Was ‘Completely Justified’
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