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The officer who shot Jacob Blake was identified.
Wisconsin’s attorney general on Wednesday identified the white police officer who shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, multiple times in Kenosha, Wis., as Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the city’s police force.
The attorney general, Josh Kaul, said that Officer Sheskey fired his gun at Mr. Blake seven times, including into his back. Mr. Kaul said that the officers who were involved in the incident, including Officer Sheskey, had been placed on administrative leave.
Mr. Kaul also said on Wednesday that Mr. Blake had acknowledged having a knife “in his possession” when the shooting occurred and that investigators had found a knife on the driver’s side floorboard of Mr. Blake’s car after the shooting.
The information was part of an update that Mr. Kaul provided about the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s investigation into the shooting of Mr. Blake on Sunday, which touched off protests that continued into Wednesday and turned violent at times.
Lawyers representing Mr. Blake said the police had been the aggressors.
Mr. Blake, the lawyers said, “didn’t harm anyone or pose any threat to the police, yet they shot him seven times in the back in front of his children,” who were in the car at the time.
As to the knife, the lawyers said, “Witnesses confirm that he was not in possession of a knife and didn’t threaten officers in any way.”
Mr. Kaul gave the following account of the events leading up to the shooting:
Officers answered a report from a woman that “her boyfriend was present and was not supposed to be on the premises.”
After responding to the call, the officers tried to arrest Mr. Blake. It was not clear from Mr. Kaul’s statement what connection, if any, Mr. Blake had to the call that summoned the officers.
In the course of confronting Mr. Blake, the officers fired a stun gun at him, but “it was not successful” in stopping him. “Mr. Blake walked around his vehicle, opened the driver’s side door and leaned forward,” Mr. Kaul wrote.
At that point, Officer Sheskey grabbed Mr. Blake’s shirt and fired his service weapon repeatedly. (The Kenosha police do not use body cameras, Mr. Kaul noted.)
Mr. Kaul said the state Justice Department’s Division of Criminal Investigation planned to report its findings to a prosecutor in 30 days, and that the prosecutor would then determine what charges, if any, would be brought.
Officer Sheskey joined the University of Wisconsin’s Police Department in 2010, and in June 2012 received a license to be a private security agent, according to Wisconsin records. He joined the Kenosha Police Department in 2013, and the department’s bike unit in 2017.
As a police officer, “you’re dealing with people on perhaps the worst day of their lives and you can try and help them as much as you can and make that day a little bit better,” Officer Sheskey said in an interview last year with The Kenosha News. “And that, for the most part, people trust us to do that for them.”
The Justice Department will investigate the shooting.
The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday that it would open a federal civil rights investigation into Officer Rusten Sheskey’s shooting of Jacob Blake.
The F.B.I. will conduct the federal inquiry in cooperation with the Wisconsin authorities, the department said in a statement.
“The federal investigation will run parallel to, and share information with, state authorities to the extent permissible under law,” the department said in its statement.
This is the second such investigation for the department this year involving a white police officer and a Black man.
In May, the department said it had opened an inquiry into Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer who was videotaped kneeling on the neck of George Floyd during an arrest. Mr. Floyd died a short time later, and the killing touched off protests across the country that have continued throughout the summer.
Attorney General William P. Barr said when the investigation into Mr. Chauvin’s conduct was announced that it would proceed quickly. A department spokeswoman said on Wednesday that she had no update to provide.
Civil rights advocates, and even some lawyers inside the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, doubt the department will announce a decision or take action in either case before the presidential election, especially given that President Trump has built his re-election campaign in part around his staunch support for law enforcement officers.
Criminal charges in either case could alienate Mr. Trump’s supporters, and decisions not to prosecute in either matter could further inflame the protests that have swept the country since May.
Mr. Barr and other administration officials insist that systemic racism does not exist in the nation’s police forces, and the Justice Department under Mr. Trump has mostly stopped using consent decrees and other means to investigate, monitor and curb police abuses.
Mr. Barr’s supporters say he has successfully pursued cases against police officers in the past.
When Mr. Barr was attorney general under President George Bush, the Justice Department charged four white Los Angeles officers who beat Rodney King, a Black motorist, with violating Mr. King’s civil rights after the state case against them ended in acquittals. Two of the officers were convicted in the federal case.
Vice President Mike Pence noted the Kenosha unrest, but not what led to it.
Vice President Mike Pence, addressing the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, noted the strife gripping Kenosha, without mentioning what precipitated it: the latest shooting of a Black person by a white police officer.
Mr. Pence was the only speaker of the evening to mention the Wisconsin city, where peaceful protests over the past several days have been accompanied at times by looting and fires.
“The violence must stop, whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha,” the vice president said, citing other two other American cities where violence has also exploded amid protests. “Too many heroes have died defending our freedom to see Americans strike each other down.”
Mr. Pence, who in 2017 flew to Indianapolis for an N.F.L. game and then walked out after several players knelt during the national anthem, also sought to cast himself as a supporter of those who express their beliefs in nonviolent ways.
“President Trump and I will always support the right of Americans to peacefully protest,” he said Mr. Pence. “But rioting and looting is not peaceful protest.”
An Illinois teenager was arrested after two people were fatally shot.
A 17-year-old from Illinois was arrested and charged on Wednesday after two people were fatally shot during a chaotic night of protests in Kenosha, Wis.
The teenager, Kyle Rittenhouse, was arrested in Antioch, Ill., after being charged with first-degree intentional homicide, according to a court document filed in Lake County, Ill. Antioch is about 30 minutes southwest of Kenosha, just over the Illinois line.
The deadly shooting erupted on Tuesday during a third night of unrest in Kenosha, where protesters have flooded the streets to condemn the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was paralyzed after a white officer fired at him seven times.
The fatal shooting that Mr. Rittenhouse was charged in came as protesters scuffled with a group of men who were carrying guns and saying they wanted to protect Kenosha businesses from looting.
A hail of gunfire broke out, along a crowded, dark street, sending bystanders fleeing into parking lots and screaming in terror. Two men, 26 and 36, were killed and a third was seriously injured.
The authorities said Mr. Rittenhouse was not a protester but they did not say what he was doing there.
The continuing strife in Kenosha prompted Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a Democrat, to order hundreds of National Guard troops into the city. It also drew the attention President Trump, who is in the third day of the Republican National Convention and has sought to portray jurisdictions run by Democrats as rife with danger and crime.
Mr. Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he planned to deploy federal law enforcement officials to Kenosha and that Mr. Evers, a Democrat, had agreed to accept the help.
Tracking Kyle Rittenhouse: a visual investigation.
Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident who walked among protesters in Kenosha, Wis., carrying a military-style semiautomatic rifle, was arrested and faces a charge of first-degree intentional homicide in shootings that killed people Tuesday night.
Mr. Rittenhouse appeared on multiple videos taken during the night by protesters and bystanders who chronicled the events of the evening as peaceful protests gave way to chaos, with demonstrators, armed civilians and others facing off against one another and the police in the darkened streets.
The New York Times’s Visual Investigations unit analyzed hours of footage to track Mr. Rittenhouse’s movements leading up to, and during, the shootings.
Who is Kyle Rittenhouse?
Mr. Rittenhouse was arrested early Wednesday in his hometown, Antioch, Ill., which is about 30 minutes southwest of the protests in Kenosha, just over the state line.
Multiple posts on his social media accounts proclaim support for pro-police causes like the Blue Lives Matter movement and Humanize the Badge, a nonprofit group that he ran a Facebook fund-raiser for on his 16th birthday.
His posts also suggested a strong affinity for guns, with videos showing Mr. Rittenhouse taking backyard target practice, posing with guns and assembling an assault rifle.
But many details about both his background and his motivations for walking around the Kenosha protests carrying an assault rifle are still emerging.
Before the shootings
About two hours before the first shooting, the producer of a video livestream interviews Mr. Rittenhouse at a Kenosha vehicle dealership.
Mr. Rittenhouse is there at the same time as several other armed men. Some of them are positioned on the building’s roof overlooking the parking lot where vehicles were burned the day before.
In a brief exchange on the livestream, he identifies himself as “Kyle.”
In another interview, Mr. Rittenhouse speaks with Richie McGinniss, a video editor at The Daily Caller, a conservative news and opinion site.
Mr. Rittenhouse says that he’s there to protect the business. He calls it “his job,” although there is no indication that he was asked to guard the site.
Later, he claims to another videographer that he was pepper sprayed by someone in a nearby crowd while protecting property.
In most of the footage The Times has reviewed from before the shootings, Mr. Rittenhouse is around this area. He also offers medical assistance to protesters.
About 15 minutes before the first shooting, police officers drive past Mr. Rittenhouse, and the other armed civilians who claim to be protecting the dealership, and offer water out of appreciation.
Professional athletes boycotted games to protest the shooting.
Athletes from the N.B.A., W.N.B.A., Major League Baseball, W.T.A. and Major League Soccer took their boldest stand yet against systemic racism and police brutality, boycotting games on Wednesday in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
The moves dramatically escalated a season of athletes demonstrating for social justice, with some players expressing doubts about continuing to play during widespread social unrest.
The boycotts came after Milwaukee Bucks players refused to come out of the locker room for their N.B.A. playoff game against the Orlando Magic. The league quickly postponed two other playoff games scheduled for Wednesday.
Players in other leagues soon followed the N.B.A. players’ lead, with numerous professional basketball, baseball and soccer games called off as a result.
N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. players have long been at the forefront of protests in the sports world. But they went even further this year after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and as leagues took an extended hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Still, the Bucks’ boycott escalated the athletes’ demonstrations to new heights.
LeBron James, the N.B.A.’s biggest superstar, appeared to capture the mood of many players with a blunt message posted on Twitter earlier in the day.
“WE DEMAND CHANGE,” he wrote. “SICK OF IT.”
Since Mr. Blake was shot, many N.B.A. players had openly debated the wisdom of continuing to play, questioning whether the platform provided by the league’s return was amplifying their message or taking attention from the broader social justice movement.
Milwaukee’s George Hill gave a glimpse of the players’ mind-set on Monday.
“We shouldn’t have even come to this damn place to be honest,” Mr. Hill said. “I think coming here just took all the focal points off what the issues are.”
Late Wednesday, more than three hours after Milwaukee’s game against Orlando had been scheduled to start, Mr. Hill and his teammate Sterling Brown read a team statement.
“We are calling for justice for Jacob Blake and demand the officers be held accountable,” Mr. Hill said. “For this to occur, it’s imperative for the Wisconsin State Legislature to reconvene after months of inaction and take up meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality and criminal justice reform.”
The Bucks’ three main owners — Marc Lasry, Wes Edens and Jamie Dinan — issued a statement expressing support for the team’s players. “We will continue to stand alongside them and demand accountability and change,” the owners said.
Players and coaches from the 13 teams still at Walt Disney World were invited to a meeting Wednesday night to determine what should happen next — in essence to decide how soon, or even if, the playoffs should resume.
The events in Kenosha may already be swaying some Wisconsin voters.
John Geraghty, who works in a tractor factory, had barely paid attention to the presidential race or the conventions.
But when he awoke Monday to images of his hometown, Kenosha, Wis., in flames, he could not stop watching. The unrest in places like Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis had arrived at his doorstep, after a white police officer shot a Black man several times on Sunday
And after feeling “100 percent on the fence” about who he would vote for in November, Mr. Geraghty, 41, said he was increasingly nervous that Democratic state leaders seemed unable to contain the spiraling crisis.
“We have to have a serious conversation about what are we going to do about it,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like the powers that be want to do much.”
The politically calculated warnings of President Trump and the Republican Party about chaos enveloping America should Democrats win in November are reverberating among some people in Kenosha, a small city in one of the most critical states in this year’s election.
While many demonstrators have been peaceful, some people have set fire to buildings. At least four businesses downtown have been looted. Men armed with guns have shown up to confront protesters, and three people have been shot, two of them fatally.
In Kenosha County, which Mr. Trump won by fewer than 20 votes in 2016, those who already supported him said in interviews that the events of the past few days had reinforced their decision to do so.
Some wavering voters said the chaos in Kenosha and the inability of elected leaders to stop it were nudging them toward the Republicans. And some local Democrats expressed concern that what was happening aid the president’s re-election’s prospects.
Joe Biden supports peaceful protest and condemns “needless violence.”
As President Trump seized on the chaos in Kenosha, Wis., as an example of what he says will happen across the United States if he is not re-elected, his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., condemned what he called the “needless violence” that has roiled the city during several days of protests.
But Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee, also expressed solidarity with peaceful protesters, denounced systemic racism and said he had spoken with the parents and other relatives of Mr. Blake, a Black man whose shooting by a white police officer touched off the protests.
“I told them justice must and will be done,” Mr. Biden, speaking in a video that was posted on social media, said of his discussions with Mr. Blake’s family members. He also urged those listening to his remarks to “put yourself in the shoes of every Black father and Black mother in this country and ask, ‘Is this what we want America to be?’”
Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee, is confronting competing political pressures. While many Americans, including progressive Democrats, overwhelmingly support protests against racial injustice and police brutality, Mr. Trump has tried to cast his rival as a radical who would diminish or even eliminate police agencies, and unleash a wave of lawlessness.
Mr. Biden was emphatic in criticizing those who were not protesting peacefully.
“As I said after George Floyd’s murder, protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary,” he said. “Burning down communities is not protest, it’s needless violence. Violence that endangers lives. Violence that guts businesses, and shutters businesses, that serve the community. That’s wrong.”
Mr. Biden’s response to the events unfolding in Kenosha is his latest balancing act on law enforcement matters. His deep involvement in the 1994 crime bill, for example, has earned him skeptics among those who are focused on criminal justice reform.
On the flip side, the Trump campaign has repeatedly, and falsely, accused Mr. Biden of seeking to defund the police, a measure that he opposes. Despite being untrue, the claim could hurt him, especially in swing states like Wisconsin, if Republicans are able to make it stick.
A Black man being sought by the Minneapolis police killed himself as they closed in.
A Black man who was wanted in a homicide fatally shot himself as the police closed in on a downtown Minneapolis street on Wednesday afternoon, prompting a fresh round of protests and looting, the authorities said, three months after the killing of George Floyd in the city set off global demonstrations against police violence.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said the State Patrol was headed to the city to help restore order, and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis said he had ordered an immediate curfew and had requested additional help from the National Guard.
“What our city needs right now is healing,” Mr. Frey said at a news conference with the city police chief, Medaria Arradondo, on Wednesday night. “We do not need more destruction. We do not need property damage that is unacceptable in every way, shape and form, and I want to be very clear: It will not be tolerated.”
Later Wednesday evening, the police released video of the man shooting himself, saying it was important to quell rumors that he had been killed by the police.
“People need to know the facts,” Chief Arradondo said, as he echoed the mayor’s demand that people leave the downtown.
The new unrest came as Minneapolis continued to grapple with the killing in May of Mr. Floyd, who was Black, after he was pinned down by a white Minneapolis officer who knelt on his neck. It also came as protesters took to the streets in Kenosha to condemn the shooting of Mr. Blake.
The shooting of Mr. Blake also set off protests elsewhere. Protesters in Portland, Ore., continued their nightly demonstrations that have lasted for three months, with Wednesday night’s march billed as being in solidarity with Kenosha.
A crowd of about 200 marched to a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement building, where federal officers came out to confront the crowd. Some protesters threw projectiles, and federal officers pursued them with tear gas and other crowd-control munitions. Local police officers later made a series of arrests on nearby streets.
To the south, in Oakland, Calif., hundreds of protesters of protesters took to the streets in solidarity, with a march that began peacefully with a few hundred people calling for justice. Jacob Blake’s name was spray-painted on some boarded storefronts, and some protesters chanted the name of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Black man who was killed in the city in 2009.
Later, some protesters set small fires in the streets, breaking windows and flipping trash cans. Police shared video footage showing a small fire inside the shattered glass doors of the Alameda County courthouse in Oakland.
Photos showed smashed windows at a Whole Foods store, where a Black man had lost consciousness after being assaulted by a security guard in 2015 after an altercation about payment, and video footage also showed plumes of smoke rising near Lake Merritt after a car was set ablaze.
Reporting was contributed by Katie Benner, Julie Bosman, David Botti, Stella Cooper, Andrew Das, Sopan Deb, Ellen Almer Durston, Reid J. Epstein, Katie Glueck, John Ismay, Christoph Koettl, Michael Levenson, Sarah Mervosh, Azi Paybarah, Marc Stein, Sabrina Tavernise, Ainara Tiefenthäler, Christian Treibert, James Wagner, Haley Willis, Muyi Xiao, Elian Peltier, Tiffany May and Mike Baker.
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Live Updates: Officer Who Shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., Is Identified - The New York Times
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