Saturday, August 29, 2020

JACOB BLAKE HAD AN OPEN WARRANT FOR FELONY SEXUAL ASSAULT

Kenosha police union gives its version of Blake shooting

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.
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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.

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