By Todd Richmond
Associated Press
August 28, 2020
MADISON, Wis. — The Kenosha police union on
Friday offered the most detailed accounting to date on officers'
perspective of the moments leading up to police shooting Jacob Blake
seven times in the back, saying he had a knife and fought with officers,
putting one of them in a headlock and shrugging off two attempts to
stun him.
The statement
from Brendan Matthews, attorney for the Kenosha Professional Police
Association, goes into more detail than anything that has been released
by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which is investigating.
The Sunday
shooting of Blake, a Black man, put the nation’s spotlight on Wisconsin
and triggered a series of peaceful protests and violence, including the
killing of two people by an armed civilian on Tuesday. Blake is
paralyzed from the shooting, his family said, and recovering in a
Milwaukee hospital.
Wisconsin
Attorney General Josh Kaul, who leads the state Justice Department, said
in a statement Friday evening that the agency is trying to conduct an
impartial investigation and can neither confirm nor deny the union's
version of events.
Ben Crump, an
attorney for Blake’s family, did not immediately respond to emails
seeking comment. He said earlier this week that Blake was only trying to
break up a domestic dispute and did nothing to provoke police, adding
that witnesses didn't see him with a knife. Crump has called for the
arrest of the officer who shot Blake and for the two other officers
involved in the shooting to be fired.
Cellphone video
shows Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey and another officer
following Blake with their guns drawn as he walks around the front of a
parked SUV as they responded to a domestic dispute.
According to Matthews, the officers were
dispatched there because of a complaint that Blake was attempting to
steal the caller’s keys and vehicle. Matthews said officers were aware
that Blake had an open warrant for felony sexual assault before they
arrived.
Blake was armed with a knife, but officers did not initially see it, Matthews said.
“The officers first saw him holding the knife while they were on the passenger side of the vehicle,” he said.
The bystander
who recorded the shooting, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he saw Blake
scuffling with three officers and heard them yell, “Drop the knife! Drop
the knife!” before gunfire erupted. He said he didn’t see a knife in
Blake’s hands. State investigators have said only that officers saw a
knife on the floor of the car. They have not said whether Blake
threatened anyone with it.
Matthews said
officers made multiple requests to Blake to drop the knife, but he was
uncooperative. He said officers used a Taser on Blake, but it did not
incapacitate him.
“Blake
forcefully fought with the officers, including putting one of the
officers in a headlock,” Matthews said. A second stun from a Taser also
did not stop him, he said.
As Blake opened
the driver’s door of the SUV, Sheskey pulled on Blake’s shirt and then
opened fire. Blake’s three children were in the backseat.
“Based on the
inability to gain compliance and control after using verbal, physical
and less-lethal means, the officers drew their firearms,” Matthews said.
“Mr. Blake continued to ignore the officers’ commands, even with the
threat of lethal force now present.”
The state
Justice Department has released almost no information about Sheskey or
the other two officers, Vincent Arenas and Brittany Meronek.
An annual Kenosha Police Department report indicates Sheskey was hired as an officer in 2013.
In an August
2019 interview with the Kenosha News, Sheskey said he had always wanted
to go into law enforcement, noting that his grandfather served the city
as a police officer for 33 years.
“What I like
most is that you’re dealing with people on perhaps the worst day of
their lives and you can try and help them as much as you can and make
that day a little bit better,” Sheskey told the newspaper. “And that,
for the most part, people trust us to do that for them. And it’s a huge
responsibility, and I really like trying to help people. We may not be
able to make a situation right, or better, but we can maybe make it a
little easier for them to handle during that time.”
Sheskey, who
appears to be white based on photographs and video, was moved to the
bike patrol in 2017, according to the Kenosha News interview.
He was among a
group of officers named in a handwritten federal lawsuit filed last year
by a man in the Kenosha County jail, Lathan Steven Ward, who accused
the officers of damaging his door while they were breaking it down to
execute a no-knock warrant in August 2018. He also accused the officers
of racial profiling and causing him pain and shame. U.S. District Judge
J.P. Stadtmueller dismissed the case, ruling Ward’s allegations weren’t
sufficient to sustain the lawsuit.
Before Sheskey
joined the Kenosha Police Department he worked for the campus police
department at University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha from the fall
of 2009 to the spring of 2013. He served in various roles, including as a
dispatcher, enforcing parking regulations and as a police officer,
university records show.
Investigators
have not said how many complaints may have been filed against Sheskey,
whether his superiors ever disciplined him or whether he earned any
commendations.
Arenas has been
with the Kenosha Police Department since February 2019 and previously
served with the U.S. Capitol Police Department from June 2017 through
January 2019, authorities said. Arenas served in the Marines from 2012
to 2017 and did not do any combat deployments, the Marine Corps said.
Meronek joined
the Kenosha police force in January. She received a technical diploma
from the criminal justice law enforcement academy at Gateway Technical
College in May, according to school records.
The Associated
Press has filed a request under Wisconsin’s open records law with both
the state Department of Justice and the Kenosha Police Department for
the officers’ service records. Government agencies typically take weeks
or months to turn over documents in response to such requests.
Sheskey and
Meronek did not respond to emails sent to possible addresses for them
and Arenas did not return a phone message left at a possible phone
number for him. No one returned messages left at possible telephone
numbers for officers’ family members. No one answered the door Thursday
at Sheskey’s home.
EDITOR'S NOTE: According to the toxicology report, George Floyd had a "lethal" amount of fentanyl and meth in his system at the time of his death. I suspect that, if the police union version is correct, a blood test would show that Blake was also under the influence of drugs at the time of the shooting.
__________
This is why Jacob Blake had a warrant out for his arrest
The cops involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake — which touched off a fresh wave of angry, anti-police sentiment across the country — were attempting to arrest him for violating a restraining order stemming from an alleged sexual assault, The Post has learned.
Blake, 29, was forbidden from going to the Kenosha home of his alleged victim from the May 3 incident, and police were dispatched Sunday following a 911 call saying he was there.
The responding officers were aware he had an open warrant for felony sexual assault, according to dispatch records and the Kenosha Professional Police Association, which released a statement on the incident on Friday.
That police union statement also claimed that Blake was armed with a knife at the time of the shooting — and had put one cop in a headlock and shrugged off two Taser attempts while resisting arrest.
Blake, who was paralyzed in the shooting, had been handcuffed to his hospital bed due to the warrant, which was vacated Friday, according to a statement released by his lawyer, Benjamin Crump. His restraints were removed, but he is still facing the criminal charges, Crump said.
Blake is accused in the criminal complaint, which was obtained by The Post, of breaking into the home of a woman he knew and sexually assaulting her.
The victim, who is only identified by her initials in the paperwork, told police she was asleep in bed with one of her children when Blake came into the room around 6 a.m. and allegedly said “I want my sh-t,” the record states.
She told cops Blake then used his finger to sexually assault her, sniffed it and said, “Smells like you’ve been with other men,” the criminal complaint alleges.
The officer who took her statement said she “had a very difficult time telling him this and cried as she told how the defendant assaulted her.”
The alleged victim said Blake “penetrating her digitally caused her pain and humiliation and was done without her consent” and she was “very humiliated and upset by the sexual assault,” the record states.
She told police she “was upset but collected herself” and then allegedly ran out the front door after Blake, the complaint says. She then realized her car was missing, checked her purse and saw the keys were missing and then “immediately called 911,” the complaint alleges.
The alleged victim told cops she has known him for eight years and claims that he physically assaults her “around twice a year when he drinks heavily.”
Police filed charges against him for felony sexual assault, trespassing and domestic abuse in July when a warrant was issued for his arrest.
On Sunday, within three minutes of responding to the 911 call, Blake was shot 7 times in the back as he attempted to get into his car.
Calls to Blake’s fiance, Crump and the Kenosha Police Department have gone unreturned.
EDITOR'S NOTE: According to the toxicology report, George Floyd had a "lethal" amount of fentanyl and meth in his system at the time of his death. I suspect that, if the police union version is correct, a blood test would show that Blake was also under the influence of drugs at the time of the shooting.
__________
This is why Jacob Blake had a warrant out for his arrest
The cops involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake — which touched off a fresh wave of angry, anti-police sentiment across the country — were attempting to arrest him for violating a restraining order stemming from an alleged sexual assault, The Post has learned.
Blake, 29, was forbidden from going to the Kenosha home of his alleged victim from the May 3 incident, and police were dispatched Sunday following a 911 call saying he was there.
The responding officers were aware he had an open warrant for felony sexual assault, according to dispatch records and the Kenosha Professional Police Association, which released a statement on the incident on Friday.
That police union statement also claimed that Blake was armed with a knife at the time of the shooting — and had put one cop in a headlock and shrugged off two Taser attempts while resisting arrest.
Blake, who was paralyzed in the shooting, had been handcuffed to his hospital bed due to the warrant, which was vacated Friday, according to a statement released by his lawyer, Benjamin Crump. His restraints were removed, but he is still facing the criminal charges, Crump said.
Blake is accused in the criminal complaint, which was obtained by The Post, of breaking into the home of a woman he knew and sexually assaulting her.
The victim, who is only identified by her initials in the paperwork, told police she was asleep in bed with one of her children when Blake came into the room around 6 a.m. and allegedly said “I want my sh-t,” the record states.
She told cops Blake then used his finger to sexually assault her, sniffed it and said, “Smells like you’ve been with other men,” the criminal complaint alleges.
The officer who took her statement said she “had a very difficult time telling him this and cried as she told how the defendant assaulted her.”
The alleged victim said Blake “penetrating her digitally caused her pain and humiliation and was done without her consent” and she was “very humiliated and upset by the sexual assault,” the record states.
She told police she “was upset but collected herself” and then allegedly ran out the front door after Blake, the complaint says. She then realized her car was missing, checked her purse and saw the keys were missing and then “immediately called 911,” the complaint alleges.
The alleged victim told cops she has known him for eight years and claims that he physically assaults her “around twice a year when he drinks heavily.”
Police filed charges against him for felony sexual assault, trespassing and domestic abuse in July when a warrant was issued for his arrest.
On Sunday, within three minutes of responding to the 911 call, Blake was shot 7 times in the back as he attempted to get into his car.
Calls to Blake’s fiance, Crump and the Kenosha Police Department have gone unreturned.
No comments:
Post a Comment