Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced Tuesday afternoon that no police would face criminal charges in the August 2020 shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake Jr., which triggered large riots in the Wisconsin town.
“No Kenosha law enforcement officer in this case will be charged with any criminal offense,” Graveley said, adding that Blake would also not be charged, and describing his review of the facts and the law as an “exhaustive investigation.”
Blake was shot seven times from behind after an altercation with police who were trying to arrest him on Aug. 23. Blake was wanted on charges that included sexual assault, and his alleged victim called 911 after he came to her residence. He fought police and evaded a Taser, allegedly reaching for a knife inside his car before he was shot. He is paralyzed from the waist down; he pleaded guilty to lesser charges in November and received two years’ probation in a deal with prosecutors.
The Black Lives Matter movement embraced Blake as one of its iconic victims; he was hailed by Democrats, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who met with Blake’s family and initially blamed police and “systemic racism” for the shooting.
Graveley began his remarks by pleading with the community that “rather than burning things down,” as happened after Blake was shot in late August last year, residents use his “narrow” decision about the prosecution to begin a “healing process.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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