When officers can use deadly force and other questions about Kenosha shooting answered.
What we know and don’t about Blake shooting
On Aug. 23, Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back as Blake was walking away from officers and attempting to enter a small SUV with his three children in the backseat. Cellphone video of the shooting exploded across social media and ignited a firestorm of sometimes violent, destructive protests in Kenosha in the days since.
Blake lies in Froedtert Hospital, paralyzed. Sheskey is on administrative leave as the state and federal agents investigate.
Some questions have been answered about that interaction between Blake and police on Sunday. Others remain. Here is some of what we know:
Why were officers called to the area Sunday?
At 5:11 p.m., Kenosha police officers are dispatched to 2805 40th St. for a report of “family trouble.” A dispatcher tells officers that a woman called for police and said, “Jacob Blake isn’t supposed to be there and he took the complainant’s keys and is refusing to give them back.”
The dispatcher tells officers that there’s an alert at the address for a wanted person. Blake had a warrant stemming from a domestic case in May.
At 5:13 p.m., one of the officers assigned to the call asks dispatchers for a description of Blake. The dispatcher tells officers that the woman who called now says Blake is trying to leave. The dispatcher tries to get a description of Blake’s vehicle but she tells officers that the caller had become uncooperative.
The officer replies that he has arrived at the address.
At 5:14:28 p.m., a second officer arrives at the scene.
One minute and nine seconds later, a third officer radios dispatchers urgently asking for more officers. The dispatcher sends three more squads to “Two-eight and four-oh street” or, 28th Avenue and 40th Street in Kenosha.
What do the videos show?
On the scene, a bystander shoots a video that shows Blake and two officers scuffling on the ground on the passenger side of a gray SUV.
Less than two minutes have passed since the first officer arrived.
A different video, this one shot by a neighbor from a second-story apartment across the street, shows the scene from the driver’s side: Three officers, two male and one female, have their guns drawn and are behind Blake as he walks from the sidewalk around the front of the SUV.
The two male officers follow Blake closely, aiming their guns at Blake as he opens the SUV driver’s side door, and begins to go inside.
As Blake tries to get in the SUV, one of the armed officer grabs his shirt, then shoots him in the back at close range. Seven gunshots can be heard, followed by the car’s horn as Blake slumps forward. A woman who followed them to the SUV screams.
At 5:15 p.m., an officer reports “shots fired.”
Other video shot by bystanders shows police officers working to save Blake’s life as he lies on the ground in a pool of blood. He is loaded into an ambulance, which is driven about eight blocks to Bradford High School. There, a Flight for Life helicopter awaits to fly him to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa.
Was Jacob Blake armed?
This question is key to understanding police officers’ actions in the case and whether Sheskey’s use of potentially deadly force may be found to be justified in this case.
To date, authorities have released little information on the matter but what has been put out is not entirely clear.
From the Wisconsin Department of Justice, one thing is clear: there was no gun found at the scene. A knife was found on the floorboard of Blake’s SUV, officials said Wednesday.
According to a DOJ statement, “Blake admitted that he had a knife in his possession.” But it is not clear whether Blake held that knife during the Sunday confrontation with police, was reaching for it, dropped it in the car or was doing something else. Attorney General Josh Kaul and his spokeswoman would not elaborate on the statement.
Kenosha police officers are not equipped with body cameras. Officers have dashboard cameras in their squad cars but it is unclear whether any part of the shooting had been captured on those cameras.
Many would-be-sleuths online have pointed to video of the shooting as proof Blake was armed. But the grainy object visible in Blake’s left hand could be a knife or something else. Some have speculated sunglasses.
The man who said he made the widely shared cellphone video from across the street, 22-year-old Raysean White, told the Associated Press he heard officers yell, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” as they scuffled with Blake before the shooting. The audio captured by White is inconclusive — obscured by the shouts of onlookers — though there is a phrase or two that could be interpreted as, “Drop the knife.”
White said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.
Blake’s lawyers said he was unarmed. His father told the Chicago Sun-Times, “My son didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t have a gun.” And Blake’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, said in a statement Thursday, “Jacob did nothing to provoke police. … Witnesses confirm that he was not in possession of a knife and didn’t threaten officers in any way.”
But another attorney representing the Blake family, Patrick Salvi Jr., had told CNN the day before that Blake didn’t have a weapon in the vehicle. That has now been contradicted by investigators. Blake’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request Thursday to explain the discrepancy.
When can an officer shoot someone? Is it ever allowable to shoot a suspect in the back?
Officers are trained on what is called a “use of force continuum,” a standard that provides law enforcement with guidelines as to how much force may be used against a resisting subject in a given situation.
Use of deadly force is at the end of that continuum. Officers are justified in using that force or jump right to it if they reasonably believe that they or bystanders are in imminent danger of death or serious injury, according to use of force experts.
When it comes to a situation justifying drawing his or her gun and actually pulling the trigger, circumstances are limited, according to Kirk Burkhalter, a retired New York Police Department detective and New York Law School professor.
In the video of Blake being shot, Burkhalter said it was especially alarming to see Sheskey first grab Blake’s shirt, and then immediately start shooting, a quick escalation in tactics, skipping over other means of subduing Blake.
“Grabbing someone by the shirt is a far lesser use of force,” Burkhalter said. “You know, that’s like going from zero to 60.”
Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow for the Council on Criminal Justice and former police officer, agreed. He said in classes that he teaches at Georgia State University, he uses the example of a bank robbery, where the suspect shoots several tellers, a security guard and a police officer.
“It has to be an imminent threat to the community,” he said.
Jon Loevy, Chicago-based civil rights lawyer, said he could not speak specifically about the Blake shooting, but in general he said he has seen departments do a better job training officers to ramp up force as needed.
“Before there was no continuum, police could use as much force as they wanted,” he said.
There are circumstances where police can justifiably shoot a suspect in the back, Loevy said.
“There is no rule on where you can or can’t shoot someone,” he said. “You can imagine it could be harder to reasonably feel in danger when the person is not facing you but there could be a situation like that.”
Were there other steps that the officer could have taken to subdue Blake before shooting?
Johnson said under the force continuum, officers should start with verbal commands, empty-handed combat techniques, and then a progression of available tools, such as a baton or pepper spray. Officers did use a Taser on Blake, but it was “not successful,” investigators said.
Even going through all of those steps doesn’t mean that deadly use of force is justified.
“I think the problem that happens is when you’ve gone through that whole continuum. And the use of deadly force is not necessarily justifiable at that point,” he said. “The person walking away and being non-compliant didn’t give the officer a reason to shoot them in the back.”
Burkhalter said that while it might be easy to view the escalation of the situation as too fast from the video, it’s impossible to know what went into Sheskey’s split-second decision. But there are steps that could have been taken first.
“One of the best practices is to take cover, conceal yourself, you know, behind a car, fire hydrant to protect yourself and then use the amount of force,” he said. “This is not the Wild West, you just don’t stand toe to toe and shoot it out with someone unless you have a reason to.”