Atlanta police officer Gerald Walker, who fatally shot rapper Linton Blackwell outside a Buckhead bar on the night of Oct. 11, was already under investigation for another shooting earlier in the year.
Walker, who was working an off-duty security job during the October shooting, was on-duty the night of March 26, 2025, when he shot 42-year-old Travis Walker, no relation, with his department-issued shotgun outside an auto repair shop in Sylvan Hills.
Blackwell’s family began calling Walker’s employment with the department into question after learning of the previous shooting, the multiple complaints sustained by internal affairs, and the autopsy results that revealed Blackwell had been shot in the back 17 times.
“[If] you keep continuing to get away [with bad behavior] and you’re not being held accountable, you get bolder and bolder,” Blackwell’s cousin Jimmy Hill told Capital B Atlanta.
For Hill, finding out about Walker’s history was eerily similar to when he discovered the history of complaints against the Atlanta police officer who killed his own son in 2019.
“It’s disturbing that the Atlanta Police Department has never been held accountable for having bad officers on the force, bad apples on the force. You know, the bad apples really come from rotten trees,” he said.
In a statement to Capital B Atlanta, an Atlanta Police spokesperson said Walker is currently assigned to duties outside of field operations.
Overpolicing a Community
Walker became an Atlanta police officer in April 2023, and while the sustained complaints on his disciplinary report didn’t begin until 2024, one Atlanta resident told Capital B Atlanta she had multiple negative interactions with him during his first year on the force.
While Kimberly Brooks was a resident at the Villages at Carver in 2023, she said she first encountered Walker when he came to her door with another resident, asking if they could come inside to search for the resident’s missing cellphone.
When she refused, Walker and the resident left to ask her neighbor in the unit next door about the missing phone. Though Walker’s aggressiveness during the interaction left a bad taste in her mouth, it wasn’t until a few months later that she decided to bring her complaints to the neighborhood planning unit.
In an unrelated incident, Brooks, a community organizer, said she intervened while Walker questioned some of the kids she knew from the community after APD had received reports of kids carrying guns in the area.
“I said to him, ‘Hey, they’re not with their parents, why are you questioning them?’” she recalled. “I was very disturbed because the children were scared.”
Brooks said she demanded that Walker find the kids’ parents to get permission to question them.
“I said, ‘These kids weren’t carrying guns, and they still have rights,’” she said.
Brooks brought her concerns about Walker’s presence in the Villages at Carver and overpolicing of the community during the October 2023 meeting for NPU-Y.
In response, the police department’s representative at the meeting, Capt. Reginald Pettis, told Brooks that a few months earlier he and members of APDs senior leadership team met with the owners of the Villages at Carver, who said their main safety concern was “children with guns” in the complex.
“The Villages at Carver, that apartment complex, leads the zone the entirety of zone three in crime of any apartment complex. You are number one. So we’re going to have a presence there. We’re there to protect everybody,” Pettis said at the October 2023 meeting.
Brooks said the response was indicative of how little accountability there is for the conduct of police officers.
“I don’t expect the person that doesn’t want to uphold the law, or do their job, to do the right thing. What I do expect, however, is when we become aware of it, that he is sanctioned and he is properly prosecuted, the same way you do the people in the Black community,” she said.
Tiffany Roberts, director of public policy at the Southern Center for Human Rights, told Capital B Atlanta that elected officials allow APD to avoid accountability.
“Any rule pertaining to the police department under the city of Atlanta charter is entirely under the purview of the mayor, and City Council can control their money,” she said. “City Council, with courage, can say, ‘Until certain things are resolved with respect to communities concerns with APD … we’re not going to allocate funding, we’re not going to give you the money that you’re asking for until we’re satisfied that the resources we’ve given to you are being used for the purposes that your constituents intend.’”
Walker’s disciplinary history, obtained through an open records request, shows that as of January 2026, he has had 11 total work rule violations filed against him.
Through 2024 and 2025, internal affairs has closed seven investigations and sustained six of the allegations against Walker, related to body-worn camera and arrest procedures.
As of January 2026, there are four undated open allegations where Walker is listed as “involved” according to the disciplinary history. The allegations include maltreatment or unnecessary force, failure to conform to search and seizure procedures, and two for misuse of firearms.
“If they have an officer that creates the same harm repeatedly, they find a measure of grace that they don’t extend to people in our communities who find themselves repeatedly in jail because of addiction or mental health issues or extreme poverty,” Roberts said.
In Atlanta, however, Roberts said she believes the political will to create institutional change appears to be lacking from the mayor’s office and City Council, which have the power to require the police department to act.
“APD will find the justification to keep someone who has shot two people and killed one on the force, and they have more grace for him than somebody who’s been caught selling drugs a few or caught using drugs a few times,” Roberts said.
Shooting at a repair shop
When Gerald Walker shot Linton Blackwell on Oct. 11, he was already under investigation for the March shooting at an auto repair shop in Sylvan Hills.
Though the investigation remains ongoing, Capital B Atlanta obtained the 911 call made from the shop that police officers were responding to.
“He pulled out a gun and said ‘I’m killing you, I’m killing you, I’m a murderer, I’m a murderer,’” the caller said, referring to Travis Walker.
The caller, an employee, told the dispatcher that a man who had brought his car in for service was drunk and waving a gun around, threatening people. The caller then said he was calling the police because he didn’t want to kill the man with the gun they keep at the shop.
According to the initial incident report, Travis Walker was standing near an employee when Gerald Walker arrived and gave him verbal commands to drop his gun. Officer Walker then shot Travis Walker with a shotgun.
Later, Travis Walker was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, two counts of terroristic threats and acts, possession of a firearm during a felony and two counts of simple assault.
In a message to Capital B Atlanta, Travis Walker wrote that his gun was legal, so charges were pressed to justify the shooting.
“I’m not a criminal, I am a family man,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations confirmed the investigations into the shootings of Travis Walker and Blackwell remain open. Any future legal action against Walker in connection with the shootings will be initiated by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office once the GBI completes its investigation.
The Atlanta Police Department and the mayor’s office declined to comment on Walker’s disciplinary history with the department.
Witness in rapper’s death killed
Blackwell’s family continues to pressure the city for accountability over his killing last October, even as news broke of the death of a key witness in the shooting.
Earlier this month, William Stanley, Blackwell’s friend who was with him the night he died, was killed outside a convenience store off of Wesley Chapel Road in DeKalb County. Willie Smith, 26, of Decatur, has been charged with murder.
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