Shooting of mentally ill man to be probed again
FEDERAL investigators have been called in to review another case where a black man was shot dead by a white police officer in the United States as tensions grow after a number of recent killings.
The latest case to gain international attention involved a homeless man with mental illness who was shot 14 times by an officer.
Local officials found that Christopher Manney, a police officer from Milwaukee, acted in self-defence when he killed Dontre Hamilton in April this year. However, it was announced on Wednesday that the FBI and the US justice department will reopen the case to consider whether civil rights laws were broken.
The county prosecutor’s decision not to charge the officer came amid rising tensions between black Americans and police departments.
Police chiefs and officials around the country have appealed for calm after two New York police officers were shot dead by a mentally unstable man seeking revenge after the deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Brown was shot after a struggle over an officer’s gun, while Garner died after he was arrested by a white officer who put him in a choke hold.
The Milwaukee case appears to be another instance where an incident that could have been handled calmly turned to violence.
Manney shot Hamilton, who was 31, after responding to a call of a man sleeping in a downtown park. Hamilton’s family said that he suffered from schizophrenia and had stopped taking his medi- cation. Manney, who has since been sacked by the police force, said that Hamilton resisted when he tried to search him and punches were exchanged before the officer was struck on the neck with his own baton.
At that point, Hamilton was shot dead. The police chief, Edward Flynn, dismissed Manney in October, saying that the officer had correctly identified Hamilton as mentally ill but then ignored department policy and treated him as a criminal by searching him.
John Chisholm, the Milwaukee county district attorney, found that the officer was justified in his actions and said: ‘‘On a human level, of course it’s tragic [But] our job is not to tell people necessarily what they want to hear.’’
Lawyers for the dead man’s family disputed the officer’s account and said that his police colleagues had allowed Hamilton to sleep in the park.
Hamilton’s brother, Nate, said that the family hoped that federal investigators would take a more objective look at the case than the authorities in Milwaukee.
‘‘I think we’ll get a better look. I want to be confident in it but, right now, I cannot put my trust in the system,’’ he said.
Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, and the city’s police chief, Bill Bratton, appealed for calm – and a temporary truce with rank-and-file police officers – as plans were made for the funerals of Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, the officers who were shot dead in their patrol car last week.
De Blasio has called for a halt to political statements and demonstrations until after the funerals.
He admitted that many New York police officers had been angered by his support for demonstrators who have marched in protest after the death of Garner.
Police union leaders claimed that the mayor had blood on his hands over the officers’ deaths, but de Blasio has made clear that he would attend both funerals.