National Review
Why the Kenosha police officer will not be prosecuted
On Tuesday, officials in Wisconsin announced they would not prosecute Rusten Sheskey, the officer who shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake in August last year – an incident that sparked protests and riots in Kenosha, a city near the Illinois border. To justify this decision, they released two reports, one from the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office and the other from Noble Wray, a retired police chief and police reformer from the Obama administration who was invited to make an independent assessment. Some important details of the shootings remain unclear, mainly because the Kenosha police did not have body cameras at the time. The incident was captured only on cell phones of passers-by, whose videos do not show the whole situation. But when it comes to the issue of criminal prosecution, the documents are highly convincing: there is no way to prove, other than reasonable doubt, that Sheskey fired without justification. At the very least, the evidence points in the opposite direction. Officer Sheskey and two other officers appeared in response to a call from Laquisha Booker, the mother of Blake’s children. She said that Blake had taken the keys to his rental vehicle and that he had borrowed vehicles from her and had beaten them in the past. She added that Blake “shouldn’t be here”, but that she let him visit on her son’s birthday. Police dispatchers told officers that Blake had an arrest warrant for crimes of domestic violence and sexual assault, meaning that they would have to arrest him if they found him, according to Kenosha Police Department policy. When they arrived, according to the police and another witness, Booker said Blake was trying to take his car and children – and Blake was seen putting a child in a gray SUV. Sheskey said he wasn’t sure if the child was Blake’s or not. In fact, there were three kids in the SUV, all from Blake. The cops tried to arrest Blake. He resisted. Two different policemen shot him with Tasers, but he pulled out the probes. And to make matters worse, Blake took out a knife. Despite some media claims that Blake was “unarmed”, he admitted that he had the knife, there is a video of police officers telling him to drop it, and the gun was found open in the SUV after the incident. According to the DA office report, Blake also resisted arrest with a knife in a 2010 incident. And then came a series of fateful decisions. As seen in the widely publicized cell phone video, Blake went around the SUV and opened the door. Sheskey followed him and grabbed Blake’s shirt, then fired seven times. He says he stopped shooting when Blake dropped the knife, consistent with his training to shoot until the threat stops. Were the shots justified? The main question is whether Sheskey reasonably believed that lethal force was necessary to prevent an imminent threat of “death or major bodily harm”, either to him or to someone else. Shekey, another officer and some witnesses say that Blake twisted his body towards Sheskey before the shots were fired, which would have moved the knife in the direction of the officer. According to the district attorney’s office, “Officer Sheskey stated that, for the first time, Jacob Blake has shown an intention to harm [as opposed to just resisting arrest] directing the knife towards Officer Sheskey’s torso. “Such an action would clearly justify the lethal force. However, this gesture is not obvious in the video, at least not for me. (You can watch the recording on YouTube and move frame by frame using the button”<” and “>”Buttons on your keyboard.) That said, I wouldn’t say that the video refutes these claims, either – the most important issue in court, where the onus is on the prosecution – because the SUV door and police bodies obscure some of the Blake’s movements. And in any case, as Noble Wray’s report adds, whether Blake directed the knife forward or not, a reasonable officer could be in imminent danger. PO Sheskey was literally holding Blake’s shirt, and Blake had a knife in his hand, actively resisting, trying to get into the vehicle. This circumstance is aggravated only by the fact that the children are in the vehicle. Of course, it was Sheskey’s own decision to grab Blake’s shirt, and there are a number of ways we can question police officers’ actions, even if we don’t prosecute them. But when it comes to those crucial final moments, the truth is that Blake put them in an impossible situation. They could have kept a safe distance from the guy with a sexual assault warrant armed with a knife, but that would mean letting that guy get into a vehicle that they knew contained at least one child – an option that could lead to a quick high chase or hostage situation, both possibilities that Sheskey says he feared at the time. On the other hand, once Sheskey got close to a suspect wielding a knife, the chance that he would need to use deadly force increased, because the knives are incredibly deadly at this distance and there is not much time to determine and react to movements of a suspect. Or, as Wray put it:> Officer Sheskey determined it was dangerous for the public and the child in the car to let Blake go. PO Sheskey felt that he could not back down once he made the decision that evil could come to the children or the public. I thought Officer Sheskey’s analysis was reasonable based on the limited information he had at the time. Officer Sheskey did not know the relationship between Blake and the child. I’m not sure if that makes much of a difference. The United States Department of Justice reported in 2010 that 200,000 children are kidnapped primarily by a family friend or parent. Blake’s severe resistance to being taken into custody would lead a reasonable officer to believe that he would be involved in a high-speed chase. I have no idea what really would have happened if Sheskey hadn’t fired. I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision alone. And I am happy that prosecutors are not dragging this out to pursue a case that they could never win.