Blake was shackled in hospital bed after being shot by police
NEW DETAILS EMERGE OF VIDEOTAPED ENCOUNTER THAT HAS SPARKED PROTESTS
Days after a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake outside an apartment building, the authorities on Friday provided new details on what led up to the videotaped encounter that has prompted heated street protests and calls for reform.
Law enforcement officials said that in recent days they had shackled Blake to his hospital bed, where he is paralysed from the waist down from his wounds, because he faced an arrest warrant from July on charges of third-degree sexual assault, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.
Some onlookers and Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who is representing Blake, have described Blake as a peacemaker who was seeking to break up a disturbance involving two women when the police arrived.
Tarnishing reputation
Some of those who knew Blake said the authorities were attempting to justify a clear-cut instance of excessive force by tarnishing his reputation.
“They’re trying to reverse it and make it seem like he was such a criminal,” said Jesse Franklin, a community activist who described Blake as a laidback father who spent considerable time with his three young children. “The whole point is, I don’t care if he’s a criminal or has a record. Your life matters, too. He’s not less of a man. He’s a human being with kids, with a family, with a heartbeat.”
At a news conference Chief Daniel Miskinis of the Kenosha Police Department said he believed that the officers knew of the outstanding warrant when they responded to the call about a domestic dispute. The outstanding warrant, he said, would have brought a “heightened awareness” to the dynamic between the officers and Blake. “There was some resisting on the basis of that contact and the arrest, so that is what changed the dynamics,” he said.
Police defend action
The union representing Kenosha police officers issued a statement on the events that led up to the shooting, suggesting that Blake had strongly resisted arrest, fighting with officers, putting one in a headlock and ignoring orders to drop a knife that he held in his left hand.
“None of the officers involved wished for things to transpire the way it did,” Brendan Matthews, a lawyer representing the union, said.
Protests continue
Protests have played out around the country in recent days. On Friday, thousands of protesters gathered in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial for an event aimed at rekindling the spirit of the 1963 March on Washington in which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech.
Family, relatives speak out
“There are two systems of justice in the United States,” Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., said. “There’s a white system and there’s a Black system. The Black system ain’t doing so well.”
“We have a right to be angry,” said an uncle, Rick Blake. “We also have a right to call out for justice” he said.
The woman who had accused Blake of assault said:. “You shot him numerous times, for no reason.”