Police failure in Kenosha
and elsewhere in America.
I was at work when the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse case acquitted him. After work, I found myself at a bar whose inhabitants stood in stark contrast to the local community demographics.
When a sports star is arrested or injured, the hoi polloi often turn into civil libertarians or medical experts. When it comes to defending accusations of police misconduct, the police are, more often than not, flanked by gun nuts, white supremacists, and obeisant ultra-conservatives to justify their actions. Thus, I was prepared for a certain level of misinformed idiocy.
Someone sitting on the next bar stool asked what I thought. I checked my cell phone and thought, “What the Hell, I have 8 minutes.”
“Do you know who Daniel Miskinis is? Probably not. How about Rusten Sheskey? No? How about Jacob Blake? No?
“That’s kind of a problem, because those are the central characters in what happened in Kenosha last year. Speaking of Kenosha, what do you know about its population and demographics? No?
“Kenisha has about 100,000 people and it’s less than than 75% white. But depending how people identify ethnically, that percentage could be easily less than two-thirds white. About 1 out of every 3 or 4 people in Kenosha are African-American, Hispanic, Asian, or bi-racial/multi-racial.
“It has just over 200 cops and only 7 are African-American. And do yourself a favor and look up the Kenosha police website1. There’s a picture of six white motorcycle cops. That’s not the image you want for a police force that is 89% white in a community has a 33% minority population.
“So what do I think? It is hardly surprising to see a community going into collective shock after a white cop shot a black man in the back four times (plus two other shots in the side) and then hearing nothing was going to happen to him at all. And if I lived in Kenosha, I’d be asking lots of questions.”
A few more elbow benders had listened in on the conversation and fell for the bait and collectively asked, “Like what?!”
“Here you go.
“After two officers on the scene Jacob Blake shot him with a taser twice, why couldn’t the two officers get him into custody? Why wasn’t Officer Rusten Sheskey, who shot Jacob Blake 4 times in the back and twice in the side, placed on administrative leave? Why did Daniel Miskinis, Chief of Police, allow militias to roam freely in Kenosha during a protest that had gotten out of hand to the point of arson and property damage? And why didn’t the police take Kyle Rittenhouse into custody after he told them he had shot people?”
“Wasn’t the police shooting justified?” asked one guy in an Eagles beanie.
“You know between the shooting of Jacob Blake and Kyle Rittenhouse killing two people exactly two days passed. In those two days, the police announced nothing would happen to Sheskey and he would not be investigated or prosecuted. On a pure PR level, you’d want that possibility to be an open question or a while.”
“What’s wrong with militias helping the police?” asked another bar stool patron.
“Couple of things. First, militias rarely recognize civilian authority over them. Basically, they are gun nuts who formed a club. Second, it’s very clear that police weren’t supervising them, communicating with them, or trying to limit them in anyway. Any of you guys ever work for a fire company? You decide to go to help put out a house fire, you report to the fire chief on the scene and basically tell him he’s in charge of what you do and don’t do. It’s called chain of command. The militias did not help, they made things worse.”
“All you liberals are the same with your anti-cop, ‘Defund the Police’ crap.” said another. [Paraphrased, these were not his exact words.]
“You know what the thin blue line means? It basically represent the police standing in a line of blue uniforms representing law and order. Except, it is not one. Neither the shooting of Jacob Blake, the protests and violence that erupted afterwards, nor the decision to let Kyle Rittenhouse go home was good police work. And after Miskinis was given a cardboard box, the Interim Chief of Police, Eric Larsen made it clear he did not think so either.”
“You’re just a [expletive deleted]”
“Hold on, let me show you something. Bartender, can I have a blue pen and a napkin?
“See this” as I showed the crowd what I had drawn “This is a blue circle.”
”The police are not a thin blue line, they are a fat blue circle and they are the sole occupants within the circle. And everyone else around them are are just concentric circles like this.
“The police subjectively decide whom to charge. And who to protect. And who to serve. And the further you are from the police in the middle of all these circles, the less likely they will be protecting you. Need proof, pal? Look at what happened in Georgia. Two yahoos killed a black man named Ahmaud Arbery , while a third filmed it. The police did not do a thing and they kind of forced the the county prosecutor’s hand to do nothing as well. Ahmaud Arbery was far outside of the Glynn County sheriff’s department’s blue circle. Another case of the police endorsing subjective vigilantism.”
“What’s this subjective crap?”
“Jeez’, don’t you guys have any cop friends? Every cop believe his actions are objectively reasonable, just ask them. Except, it is an opinion - subjective. But police, plural, back up that subjectivity, protecting those in the blue circle, by asserting the cop’s actions were objectively reasonable. Circular logic at best. And it happen every day. To protect the people in the blue circle.
“Do you think for five minutes, a black teenager could have walked through the streets of Kenosha last year with an AR-15 unstopped? Do you think three black men could have kill a white jogger in Georgia and claim to making a citizen’s arrest of a suspected burglar and not get arrested?
“Do yourselves a big favor and keep being labelled as racists. Every time there’s a police shooting, protest, or riot, switch everyone’s race. If your opinion changes about it, you might be a racist or more likely, not as “the police are never wrong” as you thought.”
I got the feeling from the bartender that my eight minutes were up, paid my bar tab, and left.
The website for Kenosha features (as of the date of this post) 6 white motorcycle cops and a few other police in background. A poor choice with such a sizable minority population. https://www.kenosha.org/departments/police/