Devin Brosnan, the other shooting officer, faces an assault charge aggravated for allegedly standing on Brooks after the shooting in a parking lot.
Record sheets show that all 170 officers were ill from June 17, when Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced the charges, until June 20. The department has about 2,000 officers.
The murder of the 27-year-old man came amid protests across the country calling for an end to racism and police violence against blacks. Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned from her post following the death.
The police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The department denied the claim, but a police union official confirmed that, in some cases, officers refused to leave their precincts unless a fellow police officer required support.
As a result of low staffing, the department put officers normally assigned to major street crime units, in uniform, to answer 911 calls, sources said.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms acknowledged morale was low among officers, but said the city had enough officers to keep streets safe.
Vince Champion, the Southeast Regional Director of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers union, He said last week that he received calls from officers saying they were calling and leaving their shifts.
“Some simply refused to leave the venues unless an officer needed help, so it was different things,” Champion said. “They are just fed up.”
Rolfe was a member of a special traffic control unit, which Brosnan applied to the scene when he suspected Brooks might be intoxicated.
The attorneys for both officers have said they are not guilty.
Both officers had gone to a fast food restaurant over a complaint that Brooks was parked and asleep in the access lane. A sobriety test failed, and when they tried to arrest him, he got into a fight with them and grabbed Brosnan’s Taser, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
Video of the incident shows Brooks running as he appears to point the Taser in the direction of Rolfe, who shoots him twice in the back.
CNN’s Artemis Moshtaghian contributed to this report.
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