6 years after Rayshard Brooks, Atlanta begins public review of police shootings
Two Atlanta police officers were justified and following department policy when they fatally shot a man at a crowded Buckhead restaurant in 2022, the city’s Citizen Review Board concluded Thursday.
Slowed body camera footage captured the moment Nygil Cullins, 22, attempted to run from police and shot a security guard on May 18, 2022. Officers Alex Luebbehusen and Andrew Strutt in response shot multiple times at Cullins, who later died of his injuries.
In clearing the officers of wrongdoing, the board unanimously agreed neither officer used excessive force.
“Not everybody is going to be happy with our determination, but I think a majority of people are going to be able to look at that footage, look at what we determined, and say yeah ordinary Atlanta citizens came to the same conclusion that I did,” board chair Cheyenne Morin said.
The decision marked a significant moment for the Atlanta Citizen Review Board, which has been plagued by inaction and faced public criticism for its sluggish pace of reviewing cases.
The decision Thursday was the first investigation of an officer-involved shooting the board has completed in 5½ years.
Atlanta was in crisis in 2020 as residents rioted in response to police fatally shooting Rayshard Brooks in a Wendy’s parking lot in south Atlanta. The City Council responded by expanding the board’s authority. It tasked the board at that time with holding hearings and independently investigating all police shootings and in-custody deaths. It didn’t happen.
Last year, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation revealed the board failed to investigate nearly 40 cases where police had used deadly force between 2020 and 2024. The list of cases continues to grow and currently sits around 50.
Morin said the board plans to review more cases. “I’m hoping that we can speed them up.”
Council members and the mayor demanded in 2025 the board pick up the pace, and provided money and investigators to support those efforts.
The board’s delays in investigating cases have left families of those who’ve been harmed by police, as well as officers, in limbo.
“It took them long enough,” Luebbehusen told the AJC on Friday.
The whole investigative process was terrible, he said. The first 2½ years it took at the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office to decide against criminal charges weighed on him most heavily.
Luebbehusen left the Atlanta Police Department in May and now works in law enforcement in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Body camera footage was crucial in this case, said Morin, who works in IT for an insurance company and previously served on a similar police oversight committee in St. Petersburg reviewing officer-involved shootings. He moved to Atlanta 2½ years ago and was elected chair of the review board in February.
“Body worn camera footage is key not only to police officers being trusted by the public, but also us being able to bring that footage forward with our investigations,” Morin said.
State lawmakers are currently considering a bill that could greatly curtail the public’s access to police body camera footage in shootings.
The review board is a 13-member body appointed by the mayor, City Council and various community groups. At Thursday’s meeting, it gathered in the old council chambers at City Hall and watched video from the Buckhead shooting. The video shows the officers enter a busy restaurant on Piedmont Road and approach Cullins, who is seated at the bar. Cullins raises his hands and stands up before falling to the floor.
Strutt uses a Taser on Cullins and yells orders at him. People seated at nearby tables run from the area.
Cullins stands and tries to run from the restaurant when a security guard tackles him. Cullins pulls a gun from his waistband and shoots the security guard. The two Atlanta police officers then fire their weapons.
An internal investigation by the Atlanta Police Department completed in 2024 found Strutt shot three times and Luebbehusen fired his weapon 15 times at Cullins.
Germaine Austin, a lawyer and review board member, at Thursday’s meeting questioned if it was necessary for the officer to shoot that many bullets. Austin grimaced before voting with other board members to exonerate Luebbehusen for firing a second spray of bullets when Cullins continued to move.
“What I deduce is that it’s potentially necessary to prevent harm to others, especially other innocent people,” Austin said during the meeting.
Luebbehusen told the AJC on Friday he did not want to shoot Cullins.
“That was the last thing I would have wanted to do, but it happened,” he said on Friday. “I’m a human being. Taking a life is not easy.”
Strutt was promoted to investigator at the start of the year, police officer records show. Efforts to reach him through the police department Friday were unsuccessful.
The Atlanta Police Department’s public affairs office did not respond before deadline Friday to an email seeking comment about the review board’s decision.
At the time of his encounter with police, Cullins was being treated for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and depression, and was having delusional thoughts earlier in the day, his parents told the AJC in December.
Mya Speller-Cullins and Quinten Cullins said on the day of the shooting, they had called police and were waiting at his home for police to help transport their son to a psychiatric hospital. Their son left and ended up at the restaurant where he once worked. Someone there called police and reported he was trespassing.
Quinten Cullins did not return a phone call from the AJC on Friday about the board’s decision.
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