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MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The Kenosha Police Union on Friday offered the most detailed accounting to date on officers’ perspective of the moments before police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, saying he had a knife and fought with the officers. , putting one of them in a headlock and shrugging off two attempts to stun him.
The statement from Brendan Matthews, an attorney for the Kenosha Professional Police Association, goes into more detail than anything else that has been released by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which is investigating.
Sunday’s shooting of Blake, a black man, brought the nation’s attention to Wisconsin and sparked a series of peaceful protests and violence, including the killing of two people by an armed civilian on Tuesday. Blake is paralyzed from the shooting, his family said, and recovering at a Milwaukee hospital.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who heads the state Department of Justice, said in a statement late Friday that the agency is seeking to conduct an impartial investigation and cannot confirm or deny the union’s version of events. .
Ben Crump, an attorney for Blake’s family, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. He said earlier this week that Blake was only trying to break up a domestic dispute and did nothing to provoke police, adding that witnesses did not see him with a knife. Crump has called for the arrest of the officer who shot Blake and for the other two officers involved in the shooting to be fired.
Cell phone video shows Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey and another officer following Blake with their guns drawn as he walks through the front of a parked SUV while responding to a domestic dispute.
According to Matthews, the agents were sent there due to a complaint that Blake was attempting to steal the keys and vehicle of the caller. Matthews said officers knew Blake had an open warrant for serious sexual assault before they arrived.
Blake was armed with a knife, but officers did not initially see him, Matthews said.
“Officers first saw him holding the knife while they were on the passenger side of the vehicle,” he said.
The passerby who videotaped the shooting, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he saw Blake fight three officers and heard them yelling, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife! “Before the shots went off. He said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands. State investigators have only said officers saw a knife on the floor of the car. They haven’t said if Blake threatened anyone with it.
Matthews said officers made multiple requests to Blake to drop the knife, but he was unwilling to cooperate. He said officers used a taser gun on Blake, but did not incapacitate him.
“Blake fought vigorously with the officers, even putting one of the officers in a headlock,” said Matthews. A second stun from a Taser didn’t stop him either, he said.
When Blake opened the driver’s door of the truck, Sheskey put on Blake’s shirt and then opened fire. All three of Blake’s sons were in the back seat.
“Based on the inability to achieve compliance and control after using verbal, physical and less lethal means, the officers drew their firearms,” said Matthews. “Sir. Blake continued to ignore the officers’ orders, even with the threat of deadly force now present.”
The state Department of Justice has released almost no information about Sheskey or the other two officers, Vincent Arenas and Brittany Meronek.
An annual report from the Kenosha Police Department indicates that Sheskey was hired as an officer in 2013.
In an August 2019 interview with Kenosha News, Sheskey said that he had always wanted to dedicate himself to law enforcement, noting that his grandfather served the city as a police officer for 33 years.
“What I like the most is that you are dealing with people maybe on the worst day of their lives and you can try to help them as much as you can and make that day a little better,” Sheskey told the newspaper. “And that, for the most part, people trust us to do that for them. And it’s a huge responsibility, and I really like trying to help people. We may not be able to fix or improve a situation, but we may be able to make it a little easier for them to manage during that time. “
Sheskey, who appears to be white based on photos and video, was transferred to the bike patrol in 2017, according to the Kenosha News interview.
He was among a group of officers named in a handwritten federal lawsuit filed last year by a man at the Kenosha County Jail, Lathan Steven Ward, who accused officers of damaging his door while breaking it down to execute a warrant. not to touch. in August 2018. He also accused officers of using racial profiling and causing him pain and embarrassment. United States District Judge JP Stadtmueller dismissed the case and ruled that Ward’s allegations were insufficient to support the claim.
Before Sheskey joined the Kenosha Police Department, he worked for the campus police department at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside at Kenosha from fall 2009 to spring 2013. He served in various roles, including as a dispatcher , enforcing parking regulations and as a police officer, university records show.
Investigators have not said how many complaints have been filed against Sheskey, whether his superiors ever disciplined him or whether he earned any praise.
Arenas has been with the Kenosha Police Department since February 2019 and previously served in the U.S. Capitol Police Department from June 2017 to January 2019, authorities said. Arenas served in the Marines from 2012 to 2017 and did not make any combat deployments, the Marine Corps said.
Meronek joined the Kenosha Police Force in January. She received a technical diploma from the criminal justice law enforcement academy at Gateway Technical College in May, according to school records.
The Associated Press has filed a request under Wisconsin’s open records law with the state Department of Justice and the Kenosha Police Department for officers’ service records. Government agencies typically take weeks or months to deliver documents in response to such requests.
Sheskey and Meronek did not respond to emails sent to possible addresses for them and Arenas did not return a phone message left on a possible phone number for him. No one returned the messages left at the possible phone numbers of the agents’ relatives. No one answered the door Thursday at Sheskey’s house.
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Associated Press reporters Stephen Groves in Kenosha, Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, Amy Forliti in Minneapolis, and researchers Monika Mathur in Washington, DC, and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
