At the same news conference, Mayor Tom Barrett said a still image pulled
from the footage clearly showed an alleged gun in 23-year-old Sylville K.
Smith’s hand as he fled a traffic stop Saturday.
Fixed it .
Well even if he had a gun, this shoot first ask questions if they are still alive mentality that a lot of cops have toward blacks is the issue. That said these protest getting violent and destructive, although understandable, just seem like they do more harm than good.
Actually it is confirmed it was a gun, and it had 23 rounds in it. To protest this shooting at this time is absurd. You wait until the video is released. Right now we have a kid with a history of arrests, including a shooting, and a weapon with 23 rounds. He also has a felony conviction for gun possession. So to say the gun was alleged seems silly. The key is the video. If in fact he was lifting his arm with gun in hand, the police were justified. If he was running away and did not turn around, that can still be deemed justified since he was armed, but it definitely leaves the door open for it not being justified. But this guy was bad news, and using this incident as a cause for an overall protest is counterproductive. Use a legit case.
Whether or not the investigation of this particular shooting determines that it was justified, Milwaukee clearly has a lot of pent-up anger to reach this level of protest.
I lived in Milwaukee 25 years ago. At the time, we were newly married and had very little money. Our own poverty gave us a ground-level view of the methods used for segregation. The city was the most racist of the places that I’ve ever lived, with structural methods of keeping “those” people out of certain neighborhoods.And at that time, neighborhoods were very segregated. Co-workers, neighbors, acquaintances all easily used racial slurs and jokes to a degree that I hadn’t heard before or since.
I think Milwaukee is reaping something that it has been sowing over the years, and I doubt that anyone who’s spent most of their life there will recognize it.
BTW, we left after a year. Never been back…
I spent the first 25 years of my life in Milwaukee, it is is extremely racist - but nothing like a place such as Mississippi or Alabama.
I just wonder if cops would be so trigger happy if, you know, they didn’t have a very real fear that everyone around them was potentially armed.
Gov. Walker has had a long antipathy toward the city. There is a hostility that is stoked by him and right wing Wisonsonites between the suburbs and the city. Case in point. He had a chance to make Milwaukee a better city for workers and business but was too busy kowtowing to the Koch’s.
Wisconsin Gov. Rejects $810 Million, Thousands of Jobs, for High-Speed Rail Project. http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6674/wis._labor_greens_unite_to_fight_gov.-elect.walkers_no-track_mind_on
Even the pervious Republican governor, Tommy Thompson would not have let this opportunity go to waste.
I live in western Colorado where there is more-than-average support for the 2nd Amendment. Most people are “potentially armed”, and many carry openly. Yet we don’t have a rash of police shootings of citizens, armed or otherwise. I suspect the difference is that the armed citizenry are “us” rather than “them”.
That said, our local law enforcement officers DO put their lives on the line dealing with difficult situations - such as this recent shooting of a local deputy by an armed (white) teenager. Very sad.
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/shooting-happened-within-minutes-of-contact
?? Can you clarify that? It’s police and citizens either way. And if you were implying race, the cop in this shooting is black.
In this specific case, this jerk was a punk who has been arrested for numerous things, has a felony conviction for illegal possession of a gun, and in this specific case fled a traffic stop, and apparently pointed a gun at a cop (video will be released, so I doubt they are lying about it), and the gun had 23 rounds of ammo, lots more than the cop had. This kid was bad news, and I bet there are lots of black people who are not protesting who feel this guy should be off the streets, though like myself would have preferred it if he were just captured and jailed instead. But when you raise your gun to a cop, you might get shot. There is no protesting that.
The “us” vs “them” I see here is that this guy was a criminal (them), and the majority of civilians (us) are not. In no way would I lump this guy in with “us”.
And for the record, a cop shot a guy in June of this year in Colorado Springs.
Did not make the national news because it was justified. This shooting also appears to be justified. At this point protesting this shooting is absurd, and that is the only reason this is in the news.