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An attorney for Jacob Blake Jr’s family called it “a two-video story.”
In one video, a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin repeatedly shoots Blake, a black man, in the back.
In a second video, taken two days later, a white teenager armed with an assault weapon who had just killed two people, prosecutors charge, walks toward police with his arms raised. Not only is he not arrested, but he is evidently ignored, unrecognizable as a potential threat.
The two videos capture and illustrate the existence of two justice systems in the United States, divided along racial lines, said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the Blake family.
Jacob Blake Sr., the victim’s father, echoed that analysis in a speech Friday at the Get Your Knee Off Our Necks rally and march for racial justice in Washington DC.
“There are two systems of justice in the United States,” Blake Sr. told the crowd. “There is a black system and a white system and the black system is not working that well. I’m tired of looking at the cameras and seeing these young black and brown suffer.
The two videos capture radically different positions of law enforcement officers when confronted by two men: one, a father who appeared to have argued with officers, the other a teenager traveling with an assault rifle from out of state and, according to reports prosecutors, shot dead two people. and wounded a third.
Blake’s videos capture an altercation of some kind on the passenger side of Blake’s vehicle in a Kenosha neighborhood. Blake’s kids are in his vehicle. At one angle, the agents back off as Blake stands up and begins walking around the front of the vehicle. Two officers follow him with weapons in hand. Passersby scream in anguish. Blake opens the driver’s side door. An officer, later identified as Rusten Sheskey, grabs Blake’s shirt. Sheskey then shoots seven times, hitting Blake in the back.
Blake Sr told CNN on Friday that his son was chained to his hospital bed despite being partially paralyzed after the shooting. He was reportedly later released.
The second video clip captures a gunman identified as Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, who earlier in the day was seen interacting with police officers and accepting water from them while carrying a semi-automatic rifle, illegal at his age in the state.
In the clip in question, Rittenhouse is seen walking towards armored police vehicles. Rittenhouse wears the assault rifle he just used, prosecutors say, to commit two homicides around his neck. Not only did Rittenhouse walk past law enforcement officers, he was free to return to his home in Antioch, Illinois, about 15 miles away, where he was later arrested.
An Illinois judge on Friday granted Rittenhouse’s request to delay a hearing on his extradition to Wisconsin until next month.
“You have these two videos of Kenosha in a matter of days, after watching this young white man kill these two people and how the police calm down, they continue their training and professionalism,” Crump said.
“So what he tells us is that the problem is not de-escalation or professionalism, the problem is racism.”
Crump went on to refer to the incidents of a black woman murdered by police in Nashville and a black man murdered in Minneapolis.
“They have a different response when it comes to a black person in the United States. And that’s what we’re talking about with George Floyd … when they broke into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, they don’t have these things happening to our white brothers and sisters. “
Blake Sr. told CNN: “My son is a human being, but he is not given the rights of a human being… sometimes you get a little angry. Sometimes more than a little angry, because we’ve been through this for so long.
“That 17-year-old Caucasian shot and killed two people and blew off another man’s arm, on his way back to Antioch, Illinois. You have to go home. He got some water, they gave that guy some water and they high five.
“My son went to the ICU and was paralyzed from the waist down. Those are the two systems of justice in front of you. We don’t prescribe violence and looting, that won’t bring Trayvon Martin back … Tamir Rice, I could go on and on, ”said Blake Sr., referring to the 17-year-old murdered in Florida in 2012 and the 12-year-old murdered in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2014.
“That is not going to make my son get out of bed and walk.”
