Last week’s physical and civic violence at the U.S. Capitol has raised a terrifying set of questions about American democracy, including the potential complicity of law enforcement in insurrection. The president-elect joined the entire freethinking world in noticing that, if Trump’s mob had been Black, it would not have received the same concierge service. But Trump’s coup attempt was not the only law enforcement catastrophe last week: We cannot forget that, two days earlier, Kenosha County, Wisconsin District Attorney Mike Graveley chose not to charge police officer Rusten Shesky for shooting Jacob Blake seven times at close range, in front of his children, paralyzing him for life.
Last Tuesday, in what was already the prosecutorial equivalent of a Friday news dump — the day of a double-feature Senate runoff and the day before a contested Presidential certification — Graveley announced the non-charges and gave a press conference defending his decision. Graveley’s presentation was a master class in white aloofness and Black victim blaming. Graveley spent slide after slide on Blake’s thin criminal history, implying strongly that this justified his fate. He relied on tired tropes of untamable Black male aggression, including using the fact that Blake dared to remove the taser cables that were electrocuting his body as proof of the need to shoot that body over and over. And in playbook fashion, the good DA urged the Kenosha community to heal at the very moment he was twisting the knife.
To be fair, Graveley approached this case in a moderately more defensible fashion than most. Back in September, Graveley asked the feds to open a parallel civil rights investigation into the shooting, asserting that Kenoshans “deserved a second opinion.” He also invited the appointment of Noble Wray, a former Milwaukee police chief and self-proclaimed police reform proponent, to serve as an “independent” use-of-force expert. He even exhibited the barest modicum of racial humility, admitting yesterday, “I have never in my life had a moment where I had to contend with explicit or implicit bias based on my race.”
Our movement for racial justice and law enforcement accountability, which has steadily built steam in recent years, clearly influenced Graveley’s approach to the case. This is a good thing. However, Graveley’s efforts can also fairly be viewed as elaborate hide-covering. The parallel investigations by the DOJ and Wray could not force Graveley to charge these officers, but they sure made it easier for him not to. Wray’s report in particular was the rubberiest of stamps, and a missed opportunity to address not only Shesky’s tactical errors — namely, unnecessarily re-engaging with Blake — but the systemic issues that allowed a man like Shesky to do that with impunity. Graveley cannot take credit for bringing in an outside “reformer” if that person’s report doesn’t say a word about reform.
