Jacob Blake in the hospital on Sept. 5. He was transferred to a spinal-injury rehabilitation center in October. Mr. Blake’s family has said he is paralyzed from the waist down.
In July, a warrant was issued for Mr. Blake’s arrest on charges of third-degree sexual assault, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. On Aug. 23, the woman who had filed the complaint that led to those charges called 911 to report that Mr. Blake was at her home, according to interviews and records.
State officials have said that police officers responded to what they described as a domestic complaint and tried to arrest Mr. Blake.
Before the police shot Mr. Blake, officers twice tried to use a Taser on him, state officials said. They also said that Mr. Blake had admitted that he had a knife, which was later found on the driver’s side floorboard of Mr. Blake’s car. There were no other weapons in the vehicle.
In a statement, the union representing Kenosha police officers suggested that Mr. Blake had forcefully resisted arrest, fought with officers, put one officer in a headlock and ignored orders to drop a knife he held in his left hand.
Ben Crump, a lawyer for Mr. Blake’s family, denied that Mr. Blake had been carrying a knife and said Mr. Blake had been trying to break up a disturbance involving two women when the police arrived.
A neighbor recorded the shooting with a cellphone. The video shows Mr. Blake being shot seven times in the back in front of his children as he tried to get into his car. (Morales 4).
… The DOJ identified the officer who shot Blake as Rusten Sheskey, who has been with the Kenosha Police Department for seven years. He fired seven shots, and was the only officer to fire his weapon, the DOJ said.
…
Cellphone video taken by a witness on Sunday evening showed three Kenosha police officers following Blake around his SUV, and at least one of them is seen shooting Blake multiple times in the back as he opened the driver's side door and entered the vehicle, where his three young children were still inside.
[Julia] Jackson told ABC News that she has watched the video of her son being shot. She said her son's fiancee, Laquisha Booker, who witnessed the shooting and claimed officers threatened to shoot her, too, has offered to go over details of what she saw.
"We talked ... and I told her I'm not ready to hear the details right now," Jackson said. "I just want to focus on him and the children being better."
Prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the family, told ABC News that family members are calling for the officers involved in the shooting to be terminated from the police force and charged with a crime.
"We believe based on the evidence, based on that video, probable cause exists to arrest and charge the officers with attempted murder," Crump said.
"Where is humanity? Where is the professionalism? Where is the training? Why is it again that we're seeing another African American who the police are supposed to protect and serve like anybody else use this brutal, excessive force?" Crump added. "It was done in front of his three little boys … who were all sitting in the car. Eight years old, five years old, three years old. Can you imagine the psychological issues these babies are going to have" (Mansell, Windsor, Ghebremedhin, Hutchinson, and Deliso 3)?
Mr. Blake, 29, a father of six, grew up in Evanston, Ill., and moved to Kenosha a few years ago to find work and to raise his family, an uncle told The Chicago Tribune.
“It was a safer location,” the uncle, Justin Blake, said. “He could work and try to save and build a better life.”
Mr. Blake’s family said he was working and training to become a mechanic at the time of the shooting (Morales 2).
“Your life — and not only just your life, your legs, something that you need to move around and move forward in life — could be taken from you like this, man,” Mr. Blake says from his hospital bed, snapping his fingers for emphasis, in a video released over the weekend. In the video, he speaks publicly for the first time about what happened to him. His injuries are severe, and his family says he was paralyzed from the waist down in the shooting last month.
In the video, which was recorded by an activist from New York who distributed it on social media, Mr. Blake describes his injuries, which he says left him with staples in his back and stomach.
“Every 24 hours, it’s pain — it’s nothing but pain,” Mr. Blake says. “It hurts to breathe; it hurts to sleep. It hurts to move from side to side. It hurts to eat” (Bogel-Burroughs 1).
Protests over Mr. Blake’s shooting played out in the streets of Kenosha, in cities across the country and in the spotlight of professional sports in August. Athletes from the N.B.A., the W.N.B.A., Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer and at the Western & Southern Open tennis tournament refused to play, seizing on the shooting to take a stand against systemic racism and police brutality.
In Kenosha, anger was palpable during the first nights of the protests, as some demonstrators burned buildings and cars and threw fireworks, water bottles and bricks at police officers in riot gear. Officers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Protests spread across the country, to cities including Madison, Wis.; Portland, Ore.; Minneapolis; and New York.
In Kenosha on Aug. 25, two people were fatally shot, and a third was wounded, as protesters clashed with counterprotesters, including a group of armed men who said they were protecting the area from looters. The two people killed were Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26. Mr. Huber’s friends said he was protesting against the shooting of Mr. Blake.
Kyle Rittenhouse, then 17, who is white, was arrested at his home in Illinois and charged with six criminal counts, including first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide, in connection with the shooting deaths of Mr. Rosenbaum and Mr. Huber and the wounding of the third demonstrator.
Mr. Rittenhouse, who is now 18, pleaded not guilty to the charges during a brief arraignment via videoconference on Jan. 5. His trial is expected to begin in November (Morales 3-4).
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic party nominee for president, said he spoke to Blake's family members on Wednesday.
"What I saw on that video makes me sick," Biden said in a video statement. "Once again, a black man, Jacob Blake, has been shot by the police in broad daylight with the whole world watching. You know -- I spoke to Jacob's mom and dad, sister and other members of the family just a little bit earlier. And I told them justice must and will be done" (Mansel, etc. 5)
During an emotional press conference in Kenosha on Tuesday afternoon, where Blake's mother, father and three sisters were in attendance, one of the family's attorneys, Patrick Salvi Jr., said Blake was shot seven times at point-blank range in the back. Salvi said at least one bullet tore through his spinal cord and other shots damaged his kidney, liver and arm.
[Benjamin] Crump, who's also representing Blake, said his client was attempting to de-escalate a domestic incident when police drew their pistols and stun guns on him. Crump said Blake was walking away to check on his children when police shot him (Mansell, etc. 7).
On Nov. 6, prosecutors in Kenoosha County Circuit Court dropped one count of third-degree sexual assault and agreed to drop one count of criminal trespass if Mr. Blake pleaded guilty to two counts of disorderly conduct, according to court records and Mr. Blake’s lawyer, Patrick Cafferty.
Mr. Blake, who made a virtual court appearance via a video call, pleaded guilty to the two disorderly conduct charges and was sentenced to two years of probation, Mr. Cafferty said.
The Walworth County district attorney, Zeke Wiedenfeld, who had prosecuted the case, said the sexual assault charge had been dropped in part because the woman who had accused Mr. Blake was not cooperating with the prosecution.
Mr. Blake had maintained that he did not commit sexual assault, and by dropping the charge, Mr. Cafferty said, prosecutors acknowledged that “ultimately, the state could not prove it in court.”
Mr. Cafferty said the resolution of the case would not affect the Justice Department’s investigation into the shooting of Mr. Blake.
On Jan. 5, [Kenosha County District Attorney Michael] Graveley announced that charges would not be brought against Rusten Sheskey, the police officer who shot Mr. Blake.
The prosecutor concluded that a case against Officer Sheskey would have been hard to prove. He said it would be difficult to disprove an argument that the officer was protecting himself from Mr. Blake, who Mr. Graveley said had admitted holding a knife.
Mr. Crump reacted on Twitter, writing, “We are immensely disappointed and feel this decision failed not only Jacob and his family but the community that protested and demanded justice” (Morales 6-7).
Following Tuesday night's win over the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers discussed why unarmed Black men continued to be shot by police.
"What stands out to me is, just watching the Republican convention, they are spewing this fear. All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. We're the ones getting killed," Rivers said, speaking with reporters after the game. "We're the ones getting shot. We're the ones that were denied to live in certain communities. We've been hung, we've been shot, and all you do is keep hearing about fear."
"It's amazing why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back," he said, fighting back tears. … (Mansell etc. 9-10).
Kenosha, Wis., police said Tuesday that Rusten Sheskey, the police officer who shot Jacob Blake last summer, has been found to have acted within the law and department policy.
…
Chief Daniel Miskinis said the use-of-force incident had been investigated by an outside agency and reviewed by independent experts. The Kenosha County District Attorney's Office announced in January that no charges would be brought against Sheskey.
"He acted within the law and was consistent with training," Miskinis said in a statement Tuesday. "This incident was also reviewed internally. Officer Sheskey was found to have been acting within policy and will not be subjected to discipline."
Sheskey is now back on the job, having returned from administrative leave on March 31, [2021] Miskinis said.
Miskinis said he recognizes that "some will not be pleased with the outcome; however, given the facts, the only lawful and appropriate decision was made."
Blake filed a lawsuit in March against Sheskey alleging the use of excessive force (Wamsley 1).
The lawsuit, which only names Kenosha, Wisconsin, Officer Rusten Sheskey as a defendant, argues that the shooting "was undertaken with malice, willfulness, and reckless indifference to the rights" of Blake.
… The lawsuit notes that Blake "has suffered and will continue to suffer physical and emotional damages."
CNN has reached out to Sheskey and the Kenosha Police Department for comment but did not immediately hear back.
The suit asks for damages "in a fair and just amount sufficient to compensate [Blake] for the injuries he has suffered, plus a substantial sum in punitive damages."
…
CNN reported that Sheskey told investigators shortly after the incident that he used deadly force during the chaotic encounter because he was afraid Blake, while attempting to flee the scene, was trying to kidnap a child in the backseat of the vehicle he was driving (Toropin and Huynh 1).
[Paste the following on Google to see TV coverage and a video of the shooting]
No charges filed against officers in shooting of Jacob Blake l …
[Paste the following to see and hear Jacob Blake relate what happened to him during an interview with ABC]
Jacob Blake speaks out about shooting, decision not to ...
[You may also watch a video produced by ABC News detailing the activities of Kyle Rittenhouse. Paste the following on Google]
Video: Kenosha shooting timeline: Tracking Kyle Rittenhouse
Works cited:
Bogel-Burroughs, Nicholas. “Jacob Blake, Rare Survivor at Center of Police Protests, Starts Telling His Own Story.” The New York Times, updated January 5, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/us/jacob-blake-video-statement.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Mansell, William; Winsor, Morgan; Ghebremedhin, Sabrina; Hutchinson, Bill and Deliso, Meredith. “Authorities Identify Kenosha Cop Who Shot Jacob Blake, Say Blake Had Knife.” ABC News, August 26, 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/US/shots-fired-tear-gas-deployed-wisconsin-jacob-blake/story?id=72616792
Morales, Christina. “What We Know about the Shooting of Jacob Blake.” The New York Times, March 26, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/article/jacob-blake-shooting-kenosha.html
Toropin, Konstantin and Huynh, Anjali. “Jacob Blake Has Filed an Excessive Force Lawsuit against the Kenosha Police Officer Who Shot Him.” CNN, March 26, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/us/jacob-blake-lawsuit-excessive-force-kenosha/index.html
Wamsley, Laurel. “Rusten Sheskey, Kenosha Officer Who Shot Jacob Blake, Will Not Face Discipline.” NPR, April 13, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/13/986971743/rusten-sheskey-kenosha-officer-who-shot-jacob-blake-will-not-face-discipline
No comments:
Post a Comment