When DeKalb County Police Officer Robert Olsen was charged in January 2016 with killing Afghanistan War veteran Anthony Hill, he became just the fourth officer to be indicted for murder in the state in more than a decade.
Four more cops in Georgia have been charged with murder since Olsen’s indictment. All are expected to stand trial in 2019, starting with Olsen in late February. That’s five officers in total, each of them white, accused of killing unarmed black men.
On the surface it would appear the tide has turned in a state that once effectively afforded cops near-immunity in cases involving excessive force, and in some ways it has. Each of the five officers facing trial in 2019 were indicted under new state grand jury rules that went into effect in 2015. The revised system no longer allows officers to observe the prosecution’s case and then testify without cross-examination, privileges historically available in Georgia only to cops.
“There was a long period where there weren’t any (prosecutions of police officers), so five is worth noting,” said former DeKalb District Attorney Robert James, who secured Olsen’s indictment.
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