Policing ‘double standard’ denounced
In the riots and destruction at the U.S. Capitol this week, Wisconsin law enforcement experts and community activists saw a troubling lack of preparation and a clear double standard in how police treat protesters.
The contrast is stark, activists and leaders say, between the mass arrests and tear gas police fired on Black Lives Matter protesters in Milwaukee, Wauwatosa and Kenosha over the summer and the seemingly lax approach from Capitol Police to an angry mob of supporters of President Donald Trump.
“That shows what’s truly wrong with America today, the double standards with people of color. We have a lot of work to do. I am disgusted,” said Tracey Dent, a Milwaukee-area community activist.
“If that was us, they’d be throwing us down the steps,” he said.
President-elect Joe Biden had a similar message Thursday.
“No one can tell me that if that had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have
been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” Biden said in remarks to the nation.
One day before rioters surged past metal barriers and overwhelmed Capitol police, Kenosha officials braced for unrest that never came, putting up a large fence around the county courthouse and concrete barriers on nearby streets and calling in 500 Wisconsin National Guard members.
The district attorney’s decision Tuesday not to charge Kenosha Officer Rusten Sheskey in the August shooting that left Jacob Blake paralyzed prompted a candlelight vigil at a nearby church and a march led by Blake’s family that drew a peaceful crowd of less than 100.
The National Guard members stood by, and the demonstrations “resulted in no significant conflict,” Kenosha police said.
But the images of the robust and attimes aggressive police response to protesters in the summer and fall remain clear in local activists’ minds. Hundreds were arrested and ticketed for curfew violations, and several Wisconsin police forces, dressed in tactical gear, fired tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds.
'Where was the tear gas and the rubber bullets?'
Kimberly Motley, a civil rights lawyer, represents about 50 protesters who were charged, ticketed or injured during protests in Kenosha and Wauwatosa. She said she couldn’t look away from coverage of the mob entering the U.S. Capitol Wednesday.
“Honestly, I was just so angry yesterday,” she said. “As an American, as a person, to see all these people engaged in felonious criminal activity, basically unchecked,” when protesters like her clients encountered so much more police response.
“Where was the tear gas and the rubber bullets?” she asked. “They know how to police a huge presence of people in D.C, but we didn’t see any of that.”
Motley was encouraged that at least some people were arrested. “That’s the first step. They’re entitled to due process like everyone else.”
People at Black Lives Matter and similar protests, she said, “were punished and harassed under the guise of ‘preserving public order’ when the real purpose was to quash the message and punish them for seeking change.”
Though she felt officers in Kenosha and Wauwatosa should be charged for killing people in the line of duty, Motley thought — based on the little known as of Thursday — it might be different for the officer who fired killed a 35-year-old California woman as she tried to come through a broken door on Wednesday.
“I don’t think the officer should be prosecuted, if what we’re hearing is accurate,” Motley said. “She was committing a felony. It was like someone breaking into your home. They were told to stop. It’s their job to protect the Capitol.”
Capitol's lack of preparation ‘baffling'
Two local leaders who typically might disagree on policing issues both noted the disparity in the police response started with a lack of preparation at the Capitol — even though D.C. officials knew rioters were planning for the event on social media.
There was an undeniable “distinction” between the security measures and staffing at Wisconsin demonstrations and at the U.S. Capitol, said Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the state’s largest police union.
“It’s baffling. Frankly, it’s inexplicable,” he said. “Someone should be held accountable.”
Larry Dupuis, legal director for the ACLU of Wisconsin, said the two approaches were telling.
“In D.C. they essentially had a minimalist presence,” Dupuis said. “In Tosa and Kenosha, there’s these preemptive curfews and preemptive lockdowns, and hair-trigger confrontations from the police, immediately militarizing the situation.”
One video posted to social media Wednesday showed people in D.C. Capitol Police jackets moving barriers outside the Capitol building, allowing demonstrators to pass through to the building. Videos posted to Twitter showed at least one person who appeared to be an officer taking selfies with people who had breached the Capitol.
“It reflects a troubling tendency for law enforcement to see white people — white people with guns, even — as allies, and to see Black people as a threat to be controlled,” Dupuis said.
Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund on Thursday defended the police response, saying officers “responded valiantly” when faced with thousands of protesters “involved in violent, riotous acts.” He called the assault on the Capitol “unlike anything I have seen in my 30 years in law enforcement.”
Later Thursday evening Sund tendered his resignation, effective Jan. 16, just hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the request.
Local inequalities highlighted
The disparity in the police response this week exemplifies the kind of inequality people of color face every day, local leaders said.
It’s not just D.C. where treatment is unequal, they said. Activists pointed out the discrepancy in protest-related arrests closer to home.
Tracy Cole, mother of 17-year-old Alvin Cole, was injured when police pulled her from her car to arrest her for violating curfew as she protested her son’s fatal police shooting in Wauwatosa.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three people, killing two, in Kenosha during unrest, turned himself in at an Illinois police station two hours later without incident. He said he tried to turn himself in to an officer in Kenosha but was told to go home.
The recent events are a local reminder that “the chasm is huge” between police and the community in Milwaukee, said Darryl Morin, president of Forward Latino.
Milwaukee artist Della Wells, who has been protesting for change since age 16, is not encouraged by how police treated the D.C. rioters.
“It seems like we always make a little progress, but then we always take steps back,” she said. “I would like to say something positive like we may have learned a lesson, but knowing mankind, no.”