No charges against cop who shot Jacob Blake

KENOSHA, WIS. » A Wisconsin prosecutor announced Tuesday that he will not file criminal charges against the white police officer who shot a Black man in the back in Kenosha last summer, leaving him paralyzed and setting off sometimes violent protests in the city.

Officer Rusten Sheskey’s shooting of Jacob Blake on Aug. 23, captured on bystander video, turned the nation’s spotlight on Wisconsin during the summer marked by protests over police brutality and racism. More than 250 people were arrested in the days that followed, including 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, the selfstyled medic with an assault rifle who is charged in the fatal shootings of two men and the wounding of a third.

Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said Tuesday that he “would have to disprove the clear expression of these officers that they had to fire a weapon to defend themselves. I do not believe the state ... would be able to prove that the privilege of self-defense is not available.”

Graveley said he had informed Blake of the news before a news conference to announce the decision.

The Blake shooting happened three months after George Floyd died while being restrained by police officers in Minneapolis, the death that was captured on bystander video and sparked outrage and protests that spread across the United States and beyond. The galvanized Black Lives Matter movement put a spotlight on inequitable policing, and became a fault line in politics, with President Donald Trump criticizing protesters and aggressively pressing a lawand-order message that he sought to capitalize on, in Wisconsin and other swing states.