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Robert Parks

Age : 39

Gender : Male

Race : Black

Date : 09/13/2021

Location : 2935 Old Concord Road, Concord Crossing Apartments, Building 525

City : Smyrna

County : Cobb

State : Georgia

Agency : Cobb County Police Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during SWAT hostage barricade

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/13/2021, a Cobb County Police Department SWAT officer shot and killed 39-year-old Robert Parks during a nearly four-hour barricade at the Concord Crossing Apartments, 2935 Old Concord Road in Smyrna. Cobb County police responded at approximately 9:45 a.m. after receiving several 911 calls reporting gunfire and an armed man at the apartment complex.
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When officers arrived, police said Parks was on an apartment balcony throwing objects and that another man was beside him with his wrists bound. According to Cobb police, Parks went back inside the apartment with the bound man after seeing police. Officers treated the situation as a hostage incident and called the department's SWAT team and crisis negotiators.
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Police alleged that Parks possessed both a handgun and a knife during the barricade. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation's initial release stated only that Parks was armed with a gun. Cobb police spokesman Sgt. Wayne Delk subsequently said officers had observed both a gun and knife in Parks' possession.
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Importantly, Cobb police acknowledged that Parks did not fire at police during the encounter. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Delk specifically confirmed no gunfire was directed at officers.
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After several hours, a Cobb County SWAT officer fired at Parks. The publicly released GBI account does not provide a detailed description of Parks' actions at the precise instant the SWAT officer fired, including whether Parks was pointing the firearm, threatening the hostage with it, or otherwise moving the weapon immediately before the shooting. Police described the shooting more generally as an action taken during the hostage situation.
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Parks was struck by police gunfire and died from his injuries. The second man was rescued and transported to a hospital with injuries police described as non-life-threatening.
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Later reporting revealed important context that was largely absent from the first police accounts. Parks' family said he had been experiencing an acute mental-health crisis before the barricade. According to relatives, Parks had gone to the emergency department at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital earlier that morning seeking help but left after waiting for hours without receiving treatment.
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Family members said they subsequently contacted police because Parks was experiencing what they described as a mental breakdown or mental episode. A cousin told WSB-TV after the killing that she believed she could have helped police communicate with Parks and said she would have tried to talk him down.
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That information materially changes the context of the encounter. Police were not confronting a person whose behavior arose without warning; Parks' family reported that he had sought emergency medical help shortly before the barricade and that relatives had specifically alerted authorities to his mental-health crisis.
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The available reporting does not establish whether Cobb County's behavioral-health resources were involved in the response, whether a mental-health clinician participated in the negotiations, whether family members offered to communicate with Parks during the standoff, or whether SWAT commanders considered using a relative to assist negotiators.
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Cobb County had begun a police behavioral-health co-responder program in 2020, pairing officers with clinicians for mental-health-related cases. Parks' documented mental-health crisis therefore makes the role, if any, of that program in this incident directly relevant to a complete reconstruction of the police response.
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The Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted the independent investigation rather than Cobb County Police Department making the criminal determination concerning its own SWAT officer. The GBI stated that its completed investigation would be forwarded to the Cobb County District Attorney's Office for review.
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The GBI's later statewide accounting of 2021 police shootings confirms Parks' death as its 69th police shooting investigation of that year and identifies Cobb County Police Department as the involved agency.
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The publicly available record located for this update does not identify the SWAT officer who killed Parks. It also does not provide a detailed final GBI reconstruction of the shooting, the number of rounds fired, the distance between Parks and the SWAT officer, the precise position of the hostage when police fired, or the evidence establishing exactly what Parks was doing with the firearm when deadly force was used.
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Those details are especially important because the standoff lasted nearly four hours, police acknowledged Parks did not fire at officers, and his family reported that he was undergoing an acute mental-health crisis after unsuccessfully seeking emergency medical treatment earlier that day. The complete GBI file, SWAT operational reports, body-camera recordings, sniper/observer logs, crisis-negotiation recordings, 911 calls and Cobb County District Attorney's disposition would provide a substantially more complete account of the decision to use deadly force.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
The Cobb County SWAT officer who shot and killed Robert Parks has not been publicly identified in the records located for this update.
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The lack of a publicly disclosed name prevents a reliable individual background investigation for previous shootings, use-of-force incidents, complaints, discipline or civil-rights litigation involving the shooting officer.
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The agency itself had a substantial recent fatal-force history. Just three months before Parks was killed, on 06/13/2021, multiple members of Cobb County SWAT shot and killed 20-year-old Luis Rey Ruiz following a domestic-dispute response in Acworth. The GBI reported that Ruiz initially shot a Cobb County officer and fled before SWAT located him approximately three hours later. Several SWAT members then fired at Ruiz, killing him. The GBI investigated that shooting independently.
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Less than one month before Parks' death, on 08/18/2021, a Cobb County police officer shot and killed 28-year-old Devonte Dawayne Brown following an attempted traffic stop and police pursuit. Police attempted to box Brown's vehicle in with police vehicles before a Cobb officer opened fire. The GBI reported that a handgun was subsequently found inside Brown's vehicle but did not state in its preliminary account that Brown pointed or fired the gun.
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Brown's family later filed federal civil-rights litigation challenging the shooting. Body-camera footage subsequently made public showed the officer firing approximately a dozen rounds as Brown's vehicle was boxed in by police vehicles. That separate case does not establish wrongdoing in Parks' shooting, but it documents another contested fatal use of force by Cobb County police immediately before Parks' death.
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Cobb County police were also defending litigation arising from the 07/13/2020 killing of 17-year-old Vincent Demario Truitt. Officer Max Karneol shot Truitt in the back as the teenager ran from police following a vehicle pursuit. Truitt's family brought federal claims including excessive force, wrongful death, assault and battery, and negligence against Karneol and Cobb County. A federal court record confirms that body-camera and dash-camera recordings became evidence in that litigation.
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The department also had earlier documented misconduct involving Lt. Greg Abbott, whose dash-camera recording captured him telling a woman during a traffic stop, "we only shoot black people." After the recording became public, Abbott was placed on administrative duty and subsequently announced his retirement while the department moved toward termination. That episode substantially predates Parks' death and is not evidence concerning the unidentified SWAT officer, but it is part of the department's documented accountability history.
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The most directly pertinent agency pattern surrounding Parks' death is the concentration of fatal police shootings during 2021. Cobb County police killed Luis Rey Ruiz in June, killed Devonte Dawayne Brown in August, and killed Robert Parks on September 13. Four days after Parks' death, on September 17, another Cobb County officer shot and killed 41-year-old Matthew Joseph Wilbanks during a response to a domestic dispute involving a suicidal man. Each shooting generated a separate GBI investigation.
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Parks' case therefore occurred during a period of repeated Cobb County Police Department deadly-force incidents, including two encounters involving reported behavioral or mental-health crises within four days of one another. That history does not establish that the shooting of Parks was unlawful, but it makes the department's SWAT deadly-force policies, behavioral-health response procedures, crisis-negotiation practices and identification and prior history of the officer who fired particularly relevant to a complete review.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/man-killed-by-cobb-police-after-barricade-situation-in-smyrna/
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/man-shot-killed-by-police-during-barricade-situation-smyrna/
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/crime/smyrna-police-shooting-old-concord-road/
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/swat-active-shots-fired-during-hostage-situation-at-smyrna-apartments-officials-say
https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2021-09-14/gbi-investigates-officer-involved-shooting-cobb-county
https://www.ajc.com/news/breaking-swat-on-scene-of-hostage-situation-at-smyrna-apartments/FTQENRITE5D27FZL5RRWJMB33M/
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/i-would-havetalked-him-down-family-metro-man-killed-during-swat-standoff-speaks-out/PYTIIBVS6ZDLNJPDKCLS76R2ZY/
https://gbi.georgia.gov/news/2022-05-20/2021-officer-involved-shootings
https://gbi.georgia.gov/node/24186
https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2021-08-19/gbi-investigates-officer-involved-shooting-cobb-county
https://gbi.georgia.gov/node/24571
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/georgia/gandce/1%3A2022cv00121/298777/30/