WI DOJ Investigation Updates: Knife Found In Front Driver’s Side Floorboard of Jacob Blake Vehicle
New video also released of Jacob Blake Police shooting; Kenosha police union asks “for peace and to let the process play out fairly and impartially.”
The initial video released of the Jacob Blake police incident picked up as Blake headed to his vehicle apparently in defiance of police orders to stop. Since its release, we now have more information about the incident, including video of the earlier part of the confrontation between Blake and police.
This newly-released video shows Blake brawling with police officers before detaching himself and walking to the driver’s side of his vehicle. Reports indicate that he had a knife, and that the knife was later found in the vehicle. Blake’s attorney denied that his client had any weapons in the vehicle, something contradicted by a later Wisconsin Department of Justice update.
The Kenosha police do not wear bodycams, so the following video is taken by a bystander.
New video shows Jacob Blake assaulting Kenosha police officers moments before going for what they reasonably thought was a weapon in his vehicle. https://t.co/xTllAOsfqV
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) August 25, 2020
The Wisconsin DOJ Division of Criminal Investigation and Attorney General Josh Kaul provided updates on the investigation Wednesday.
An attempt to use nonlethal force failed when a taser reportedly “was unsuccessful.” It is not clear at this time if the taser device failed or if it discharged properly but had no impact on the target.
DCI said Officer Rusten Sheskey and other Kenosha police officers were originally sent to a home on the 2800 block of 40th Street after a woman reported that her boyfriend was there when he was not supposed to be on the premises.
Officials said Sheskey has been an officer with Kenosha police for seven years.
Police tried to arrest Blake and deployed a Taser to stop him. Officials said Blake walked around his vehicle, opened the driver’s side door and leaned forward.
Sheskey fired his service weapon seven times into Blake’s back while holding onto his shirt, according to DCI.
Police said no other officer fired their weapon. The Kenosha Police Department does not have body cameras, which is why no body cam footage is available.
In an investigation after the shooting, officials said Blake admitted he was possessing a knife, which was recovered from the driver’s side floorboard of his vehicle. No other weapons were found in the car.
The update conflicts with Blake’s attorney Ben Krump, who said Blake did not have any weapons in the vehicle at all.
Blake immediately received medical aid and was taken to Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, where he remains hospitalized.
The involved officers have also been placed on administrative leave.
Wisconsin governor Tony Evers (D) immediately issued a statement condemning police use of “excessive force.”
While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country.
— Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) August 24, 2020
And we stand against excessive use of force and immediate escalation when engaging with Black Wisconsinites.
— Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) August 24, 2020
The local police union is pushing back.
Meanwhile, the police union representing officers on the Kenosha police force released a statement on Monday criticizing Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, who immediately condemned the ‘excessive force’ used by the cops.
‘Anytime deadly force is used, our hearts go out to those affected by it,’ Pete Deates, president of the Kenosha Professional Police Association, said in a statement.
‘We assure you an independent investigation is being conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation.
‘Until that investigation is completed, we ask that you withhold prejudgment about the incident and please the let process take place.
‘Governor Evers’ statement on the incident was wholly irresponsible and not reflective of the hardworking members of the law enforcement community, not to mention the citizens of the City of Kenosha.
‘As always, the video currently circulating does not capture all the intricacies of a highly dynamic incident. We ask that you withhold from passing judgement until all the facts are known and released.
‘We, along with the citizens of the great City of Kenosha, ask for peace and to let the process play out fairly and impartially.’
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that it will be conducting a federal civil rights investigation of this police shooting.
We’ll continue to provide updates as more information becomes available.
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Comments
The Kenosha police do not wear bodycams
Sounds like they’re suicidal.
In an investigation after the shooting, officials said Blake admitted he was possessing a knife
I suppose they failed to get on video, too.
As always, the video currently circulating does not capture all the intricacies of a highly dynamic incident.
Well, that will tend to happen when you don’t have your own video. That’s exactly what it’s for.
American police are doing an apallingly incompetent job at controlling their narratives. If the facts are on your side, be prepared to show it. You can be sure that somebody else will have the video, even if you don’t.
Tom,
Agreed. Body cameras are a must have tool in modern society. The lack of LEO perspective footage damages the ability of LEO to provide their story. This allows others to provide footage that may or may not be complete, it might be edited, it may be from a distance.
The body camera, used properly, provides footage throughout the encounter.
I’ve never seen a more ill timed and incendiary comment from a public official than Gov. Evers first knee jerk, pandering to the mob missive. He should be deeply ashamed, stripped down to his underwear covered in tar and feathers, hoisted onto a rail and carried around town. Then he can resign as he is not fit to hold office.
“I’ve never seen a more ill timed and incendiary comment from a public official…”
You don’t pay a lot of attention to NY, do you?
Or the mayors of Chicago or Portland.
Shouldn’t some official be opining that the officer “acted stupidly” about now?
Only one cop had a working taser? The knife in the vehicle, if the bad black man reached it, could have been wielded to stab himself, the dashboard, steering wheel, center console (if there was one), the driver’s seat, the driver’s seat back, the driver’s side floor, and if rapidly deployed by a left-handed bad black man, possibly the partially-open driver’s inside door panel. The cop could have disabled the bad black man one, two or possibly three shots at point blank range–why did he need four more? If Mr. Policeman is ever allowed to serve and protect anyone in the future, he needs well-supervised remedial target range work, for the protection of his fellow workers, the general public, and himself. And, why was the bad black man allowed to schlep maybe 20 feet around the vehicle without having a skillfully employed nightstick across his leg(s) that should have brought him to the ground no later than when he reached the driver’s-side headlight? Just asking.
Turn the police loose! Fuck the Constitution and Bill of Rights!
“While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of >>other Black men.<<"
There, Governor. FIFY.
.
Excellent example of irrelevancy to demonstrate bigotry.
“As side from the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos was otherwise unarmed.”
Was a knife found on Breonna Taylor’s nightstand, or nah?
Was there a knife on the violent thug Michael Brown? Was there a knife on the violent thug Trayvon martin? I understand, though. You are losing the narrative advantage, so you must introduce non sequiturs.
Not your best effort at trolling.
Taylor was killed by LEO conducting a no knock warrant, tactical entry based upon, what has been investigated by other LEO agencies and reported as false information ginned up by a crooked cop for drug related crime to boost his arrest rate.
The question to you is; which of the following are you opposed to?
A. Crooked cops
B. No knock warrants being issued with little supervision
C. Tactical entry by LEO with little or no justification
D. All the above
E. None of the above
If you didn’t answer all of the above you got it wrong.
LEO should have no knock warrant and tactical entry in their toolkit, but due to the vast potential for overuse and misuse, they should be heavily scrutinized prior to being authorized.
or this one…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnA17NkTOww&t=109s
tough to watch and I don’t think either the victim or the cops are in the wrong. I’d like to drop the neighbor from the roof top though.
Does “Stupid mistake” fall under B or C or, is it a separate category?
Whether she had a knife is irrelevant. She was killed in the shootout between the cops and her boyfriend. The question is whether her boyfriend did anything wrong in shooting at the cops, which depends on whether they used their no-knock warrant, as he claims, or they announced themselves, as they claim.
Since they had the warrant I’m more inclined to believe him; they used the warrant they had gone to such trouble to get, broke into the home, and the resident naturally thought they were intruders and defended himself, as he had every right to do.
Either way, that she died is a sad accident. And no-knock warrants should be eliminated.
We can’t fight the War on Some Drugs without them. /s
How ’bout ending the endless and futile “war on drugs?” And for profit jails and prisons? And focus on violent crimes and medical referral to give American taxpayers a break.
Come to think of it, how about a “war on excessive Big Pharma drug profits?”
Tasers? I’ve seen people fight through it, same with OC spray, same with multiple baton strikes that had broken bones, and still attempt to use deadly force. Ever fight for your life with just you hands and feet wearing body armor and and full gear? If it’s not ended fast, your dead, no matter how good your conditioning is. I’ve stood over a body of an assailant who took 14 rounds of 230 grain .45 acp hydro-shocks, he continued to advance with a knife despite sustaining multiple fatal(eventually) wounds. What stopped him “cold” was a shot to the head. The cops can shoot you before you stab them when you’re reaching with intent, and if the back is what’s presented, so be it. As far as video, realize this: it’s like looking through a keyhole into a room. A very small amount of information is visible. That said, every cop should have a body cam and what is recorded daily should be released on YouTube every day. Citizens would not believe what is encountered everyday on the other side of the thin veil of civilization that most people live behind . The anti-cop rhetoric would disappear overnight.
I’ve heard similar. If the blood is thoroughly oxygenated when the first rounds strike, the brain keeps commanding the body even as it dies. What a nightmare to face.
.
Tasers fail to do the job so often that many jurisdictions don’t allow them w/out lethal cover from another officer.
Which there was, multiply.
Lemme understand. Blake coulda flipped the knife under his left armpit before the cop holding him with one hand from behind could shoot him a couple of times and neutralize Blake? Or, Blake coulda flipped it over his left or right shoulder while the cop held him with one hand, etc.? Or, Blake coulda tried to flip it left handed over his left shoulder or under his left armpit, or jammed it lefty backward, etc., before police officer could shoot him a few times? Help us out.
During the investigation following the initial incident, Mr. Blake admitted that he had a knife in his possession. DCI agents recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of Mr. Blake’s vehicle. A search of the vehicle located no additional weapons
https://twitter.com/juliebosman/status/1298758686798688257
Since we are on this case maybe we might want to start a thread on the shooting that followed. It is another self defense case with Riddenhouse.
I mean this case, the Atlanta case are very similar. In both they had a weapon and self defense applies.
Same with Riddenhouse. his case sound like a classic self defense case. Since he was 17 and was open carry, he was not following the law for 18. If they make this claim, then I would assume they can not charge him as an adult?
I am guessing that is not a felony. The guy that got a nice shot to the arm was concealed carry. Used in an assault, that dude should have charges against him too. Lets start applying the law.
The issue wasn’t open carry, the issue was possession of a firearm in that state at 17. The other armed dude was an ex-felon, legally prohibited from possessing any firearm, much more cut and dry offense, his arm was a suitable lesson.
Sorry, I meant to add… Rittenhouse’s possession violation would be “only” a Class A misdemeanor.
Seems like most of the Police Shootings start with suspects not complying with instructions from Leo’s. These young men need better upbringing and more obeying of the law.
All well and good but, what about the cops who abuse the Constitution and Bill of Rights at the git-go?
I have to dig back into my memory, but carrying a rifle has lesser ages than buying a rifle. In the 70’s, in Ohio, one could carry a rifle to hunt at 12 with an adult and at 16 without a chaperone. Of course, back then, I always had a rifle behind the seat in the pickup when parked at high-school since I usually drove straight to the farm after school.
Differs state by state. Wisconsin says no to independent possession under 18.
Wouldn’t the officers be justified in their actions not only self defense but they were preventing a wanted criminal with warrants from fleeing the scene and creating a far worse situation? Can you imagine the political reaction,if he had managed to start the car and initiated a dangerous police chase during which fatalities or injuries occurred? I wonder if he was holding his keys?
The Fleeing Felon rule was struck down for police a long time ago, as a violation of the 4th amendment. Police are now only allowed to shoot fleeing felons if having them loose poses an immediate danger to the public.
(It was not struck down for private actors. In most if not all states the legislature had already limited the rule to police only, so in those states when the Supreme Court struck it down for police the rule was dead. I don’t know if there are any states where the rule still applied to private actors, but if there are then the court decision didn’t change it; ironically in those states private actors may shoot fleeing felons, but police may not.)
Fleeing felon rule or not the officers couldn’t allow Blake to assault them or drive away. He climbed into the vehicle for a reason to get a weapon or to drive away. The cops did what they had to do.
Woo doesn’t sound like a Roma fortune teller but, WTF, a mind-reading fortune teller works for me! Heil Drumpf!
“The update conflicts with Blake’s attorney Ben Krump, who said Blake did not have any weapons in the vehicle at all.”
Sometimes I don’t think Ben Crump is very bright. I dunno maybe I’ve misunderestimated him.
Crump is doing what he does best; muddy the waters with the “unarmed” trope, get a large financial settlement and take his cut from the city before anything even goes to court. Seems to be his entire business model.
Yeah, Crump is raking in dough, so he must be doing something right. Still, I think the quality of African American lawyers who live to make trouble for da po-po has gone down hill. I mean, love him or hate him, there’s no denying Johnnie Cochran was a brilliant litigator.
Sorry didn’t mean to downvote you was hitting reply .
Maybe Crump can find an older half sister who can pretend she was sitting in the car and absolutely say there was no knife.
J. C. had a racist black jury, strange judge, cop(s) with racist histories, dried-out gloves that would have fit if first wiped with a re-moisturizer cream BEFORE The Juice pretended his fingers wouldn’t fit the stiffened dried out gloves and, prosecutors crippled by bungled evidence collection, preservation and laboratory analysis. Cochran was a fine attorney who took what cards he was dealt and won. Had he defended O.J. in civil court with a lower standard of proof he would have lost. It’s clear that O.J. done it.
Could be the start of bringing a Union or two to the other side of the aisle. I think the timing is ripe if played well by DJT.
You’ll never bring any union (not its members, but the union, itself) to the “right” side of the aisle. The unions are much too invested in monopolistic power over the free market to ever stand with free-marketers and small gov’t folks (they require big gov’t to maintain their labor monopoly).
And yet NYPD union just endorsed Trump. A watershed.
Unless you’re a multi-millionaire or billionaire, haven’t you been trickled-on enough by the plutocrats’ monopolies, cartels, rigged income tax structure that’s shifted an unfair tax burden off of the wealthiest (and greediest) 1% of Americans onto the rest of us? Not to mention the entirely rigged international commercial playing field that encourages U.S. corporations to park profits offshore to dodge taxes while punks like Schmuckerberg and Beezer and Twit Robbedme offshore factories and jobs to Red China and Indonesia? How about the tax dodge that allows U.S. companies like Burger King to declare themselves corporate citizens of a foreign country that has a lower income tax than the United States by moving their HQ to a small offshore corporation? It’s a rigged horse race where the horse rides the jockey.
You can tell a lot about a group by the heroes they choose.
Agree. The minority of American voters who work for a living and voted for The Lyin’ King are idiots. Think we’ll ever see his fraudulent tax returns? Think any reputable banks will ever loan him or his grifter business operations another dime, or will he continue to get his capital by doing business with banks with international reach that launder money for Putin’s Russian Organized Crime Syndicate(s)?
I think this is what might have happened:
1. The police officers knew Blake had a knife in his hand while they were scuffling with him.
2. The police officers knew that there were kids in the car and were concerned that Blake would do harm to the kids.
3. When Blake was diving into the car, with the knife in his hand, the police officers shot Blake to protect the kids.
4. The knife was found on the floorboard because that is where Blake dropped it as a result of being shot.
I don’t think the video would back you up on that. Also, if he had a knife during the initial scuffle, I think the police would have shot him then.
I also think the cops would have mentioned right away if there were children in the car.
Blake’s girlfriend accused the cop of shooting Blake “in front of his kids,” so it seems the kids were present.
I’ve seen a still from the first released video that shows what looks like a karambit in Blake’s hand as he walks around the front of his vehicle.
If he had a knife in his hand at that point, he may have pulled it after breaking away from the officers, so that during the scuffle they may not have known he had it, or because it hadn’t been drawn they may have thought they could subdue him without using lethal force.
How dare you get rational in this discussion. Don’t you understand Blake was guilty of breathing while being black?
zennyfan: Yes.
From
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/24/us/kenosha-police-shooting-jacob-blake/index.html
From
https://bluelivesmatter.blue/did-jacob-blake-have-a-weapon-we-examine-the-facts/
GWB: Police are NOT supposed to shoot anyone for merely having a weapon in his hand. I served on a jury for a trial in which the prosecution admitted that. Buy the way, in that case the victim (i.e., a guy who was shot by police) was on trial for pointing his pistol at police. Unfortunately, the police in that case were lying a**h*l*s. They said that the defendant (as I say, the real victim) was pointing his gun at them when they shot him. However, the incident occurred in the middle of the night in a no-illumination area in which Superman would have had extreme difficulty seeing anything, and the officers initial statements had no mention of a gun. The jury hung 9-3. I believe, with no further information than what I’ve given you, that the jurors voting guilty (i.e., against the real victim) were convicting him of a non-crime, namely having a gun in his possession.
There you go again, bringing in black letter (no pun intended) police procedure. Seven (7) point-blank shots in the back?
I apologize for the extraneous boldfacing. The Preview button does not work for me on Safari, Firefox, or Chrome.
Me Too. Any similarities between this comment and the Women’s March Movement is purely amusing.
Why are police trying to arrest black men who clearly do not want to be arrested? If they would simply let them go to perhaps turn themselves in later at the leisure then no one would be hurt. You really have to blame the police when they arrest any black man but especially when they say, ‘no’.
In what part of the New Confederacy do you reside it?
This is one way BLM can cost lives: Let’s suppose some back person has been honestly convinced of the lie that the police are gunning for black people, and that therefore surrendering to police is giving your life away. After all everyone is saying that these days, so why shouldn’t someone believe it? So when police try to arrest him, perhaps even for something he didn’t do, rather than comply with their orders he tries to escape.
As in this case, he reaches into his car with the intent of getting in and driving away. So the police shoot him, as of course they should and must. Then they find he had no gun and killing him turned out to have been unnecessary, but they weren’t to have known that at the time. Then they further find out that he really was a “gentle giant” and the arrest had been a mistake. Now they’re really sorry and if they’re good people their consciences will burn. But what will have really killed him? The propaganda that he believed, that made him resist arrest in the first place.
I’m not saying that’s what happened in this case, but it may have been.
I suppose your supposing is valid–in some alternate universe other than ours.
All of the red states just need to have a fantasy draft to take the best cops from the undeserving purple and blue states that want to act like idiots.
They can have whatever is left over after the red states get all of the best cops. They can even fill in with quota hires and social workers…yay big bonus for them!
Then, let’s compare how each state is doing in 5 years.
If I were running a red state police hire program, I’d accept only the applicants who wanted to do real policing and had the integrity and spine to walk away from their blue paychecks first. I wouldn’t run a hangdog rescue kennel.
Imagine, the P***y G*****r In Chief commenting on this page!. He’s sure Making America Raped Again, just like he said he would.