No charges for Wis. cop in fatal shooting
‘The fight continues,’ Alvin Cole’s family says
MILWAUKEE – A Wauwatosa police officer will not face criminal charges in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old outside a shopping mall, but his job is at risk after an independent investigator recommended he be fired.
Officer Joseph Mensah acted in selfdefense when he shot and killed Alvin Cole in the Mayfair mall parking lot on Feb. 2, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Wednesday.
The decision marked the third time Chisholm has cleared Mensah in an onduty fatal shooting. Soon after the announcement, more than 100 protesters marched onto the I-94 freeway during rush hour. With a curfew in place at 7 p.m., police fired rounds of tear gas at protesters later in the evening. The police department said the march was an unlawful assembly.
In the past five years, Mensah has killed three people: Cole in February, Jay Anderson Jr. in 2016 and Antonio Gonzales in 2015. Mensah also did not face any internal discipline in those earlier two shootings.
The charging decision, which was Chisholm’s alone to make, deeply disappointed Cole’s family and supporters.
“The fight continues,” said Taleavia Cole, Alvin’s sister. “It doesn’t end here. We have to make sure he is fired immediately. We have to make sure he don’t ever get a job ever again as a police officer.”
The family highlighted findings released from Steven Biskupic, a former U.S. attorney hired by the Wauwatosa Police and Fire Commission to investigate complaints against the officer who determined Mensah should be fired.
“Had he not been an officer now, Alvin Cole would be here,” said attorney Kimberley Motley, who is representing the families of the three men who were shot and killed. “We are not done fighting. We are still going to fight for a con
viction of Officer Joseph Mensah.”
Biskupic found that allowing Mensah to continue as a fully empowered police officer, with the authorization to potentially use deadly force for a fourth time, “creates an extraordinary, unwarranted and unnecessary risk to the Wauwatosa Police Department and the City of Wauwatosa.”
Biskupic also determined Mensah had made “inconsistent and misleading” public statements about the shootings, which could compromise his ability to testify in court, and violated a policy banning officers from discussing ongoing investigations of police shootings.
Those factors led Biskupic to find “just cause,” as defined by state law, to remove Mensah from duty as an active officer and to recommend he be fired.
Attorneys representing Mensah were not immediately available for comment.
Officers typically have been deemed justified in using deadly force if they reasonably believe a person has the ability to cause death or great bodily harm, the opportunity to do so and has put the officer or someone else in jeopardy or imminent danger.
In this case, Chisholm determined Mensah did have those fears and acted
in self-defense.
“There is sufficient evidence that Officer Mensah had an actual subjective belief that deadly force was necessary and that belief was objectively reasonable,” Chisholm wrote in his report.
According to information released Wednesday by Chisholm and Biskupic, Wauwatosa police were called to Mayfair mall on Feb. 2 after Cole argued with a man he didn’t know and displayed a stolen 9 mm handgun.
Officers spotted Cole, another man and a woman leaving a parking garage. Police detained the man, but Cole kept running. Mensah arrived to see other officers and mall security guards running after the teen.
During the chase, Cole pulled out a handgun from a fanny pack. The teen was not legally permitted to possess a gun. The weapon fired, apparently accidentally, shooting the teen in the arm. As Chisholm’s letter put it: A shot “was discharged from Cole’s vicinity,” and Cole “went to the ground with a firearm in his right hand.”
Cole fell to the ground and was surrounded by officers, who demanded he drop the gun. What the officers, and likely Cole, did not know was that the gun had become inoperable because the magazine was not attached and the bullet in the chamber had been fired.
All three officers said Cole instead pointed the gun in their direction.
Mensah told investigators he heard a gunshot almost immediately after arriving and saw Cole on his knees, crawling, with a gun in his right hand. The officer said he fired his weapon “out of fear for his life” and believed the gun was real, although he did not know if Cole had fired the gunshot he’d heard earlier.
Mensah was on scene less than 30 seconds before encountering and shooting Cole. No other officers fired their guns.
After waves of unrest in Milwaukee and Kenosha, Wisconsin, this summer, Wauwatosa and state officials braced for the reaction to Chisholm’s decision.
Gov. Tony Evers authorized the National Guard to help local law enforcement. Wauwatosa City Hall, the county courthouse complex and Mayfair mall all closed early on Wednesday, while city schools moved in-person courses online for the rest of the week.
The case has led to changes. Wauwatosa has signed off on spending more than $760,000 to outfit officers with the cameras by the end of the year. Mensah has since been suspended with pay.
Wauwatosa Police Chief Barry Weber said his department has begun an internal review of the shooting and the conduct of all officers present. “The department hears the message from the public and recognizes the evolution required for law enforcement agencies in this age,” Weber said Wednesday.
The report from Biskupic came about after the family of Anderson, who was killed in 2016, filed a complaint this summer with the city’s Police and Fire Commission. The commission hired Biskupic in July as an independent investigator.
Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, called Biskupic’s findings to fire Mensah “utterly preposterous.”
“To use something that hasn’t occurred, a fourth shooting, as a basis for terminating Officer Mensah now is ridiculous,” said Palmer, whose organization is not representing Mensah.