Kenosha police chief Daniel Miskinis suggested Wednesday that people who violated the curfew were to blame for the fatal shooting of two individuals. during a night of protests following the shooting of Jacob Blake by police.
“Everyone involved was after the exit traffic,” Miskinis said at a news conference just hours after the incident Wednesday morning in Wisconsin. “I will not make much of it, but the point is – the starting point is too much to protect. If individuals were not involved in conflict with that, the situation that developed him would not have happened.”
“This is not the action, I believe, of those who proposed to protest,” he added. “It was the people who were involved after the legal time, involved in illegal activity, who brought violence to this community.”
Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, of nearby Antioch, Ill., Has been charged in connection with the shooting beginning Wednesday.
Protests have shaken Kenosha since police fired on Sunday at Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot seven times in the back.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has called for the dismissal of Miskinis, Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth and Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian.
“The ACLU condemns the response of Sheriff Beth and Police Chief Miskinis to both the attempted murder of Jacob Blake and the protests demanding justice for him. Their actions uphold and defend white supremacy, while demonizing people who were murdered for exercising their first rights of change and speaking out against police violence, “said Chris Ott, executive director of the ACLU’s Wisconsin branch.
The heel reached out to the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department for comment.
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