Former Atlanta police chief to become top cop in Louisville less than a year after Breonna Taylor shooting
The city of Louisville has hired a new chief for its police department: former Atlanta Chief Erika Shields.
Shields, who resigned from her post in Atlanta following the June shooting death of Rayshard Brooks by officers in a Wendy’s parking lot, was chosen by a selection panel, according to Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer.
Shields will start in the Kentucky city Jan. 19, 312 days after Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by Metro Police during a botched raid. The city on Wednesday also fired two more officers involved in that raid.
The new chief addressed the Brooks and Taylor deaths during an introductory press conference.
“It does an injustice to Breonna Taylor to say that they’re similar instances. They’re not,” Shields said. “Every situation is different. The public is not going to take the time to differentiate. They’re just going to see police heavy handedness. In saying that, though, I would ask people to look at my body of work.”
Shields rose through the ranks of the Atlanta police during her 25 years as an officer.
Mayor Fischer said Shield’s response to Brooks’ death demonstrated her fitness for the Louisville job.
“We talked about it extensively,” Fisher said. “If you are the chief of a major city in this country, you have dealt with issues like this so then the question is how do you deal with an issue like that, and I thought the action that she took to heal the city showed a lot of class on her behalf.”
Shields had described the shooting, where Brooks was shot in the back twice after avoiding getting handcuffed, grabbing an officer’s Taser and firing it at them, as “sickening” and saw her resignation as the only path forward.
“As long as I stayed, I was going to be a distraction, and the city needed to move forward. It would have been self-serving to stay ... and so I made a decision, not an easy one, to step down,” Shields said.
“You are not going to get the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “Most cops are doing the job flawlessly, but then you see these highlights where people were just out of control and collectively, as a profession, we have to do this job better.”
