Officer Rusten Sheskey, the Kenosha cop who shot then-fugitive Jacob Blake seven times on August 23, has returned to duty, the Kenosha Police Department has announced.
Found innocent of any wrongdoing, Sheskey returned to work on March 31 and will not face discipline.
In January, after a thorough outside probe of the shooting, the county district attorney found that Sheskey acted within the law.
Sheskey Did Nothing Wrong
Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis announced Sheskey’s return to work yesterday.
The shooting “was investigated by an outside agency,” a department news release said. The shooting “has been reviewed by an independent expert as well as the Kenosha district attorney.”
Their findings, announced in January, were that Sheskey acted appropriately given the circumstances: Blake was wanted for felony sex-assault when cops encountered him, and he resisted arrest, fought with police after they tased him three times, and pulled a knife as he tried to escape in an SUV he did not have permission to use.
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Said Miskinis:
Officer Sheskey was not charged with any wrongdoing. He acted within the law and was consistent with training. This incident was also reviewed internally. Officer Sheskey was found to have been acting within policy and will not be subjected to discipline.
Unsurprisingly, the chief nearly apologized for backing his officer and doing the right thing:
Although this incident has been reviewed at multiple levels, I know that some will not be pleased with the outcome; however, given the facts, the only lawful and appropriate decision was made.
The concession that reinstating Sheskey was the “only lawful and appropriate decision” sounds similar to the statement in January from Michael Graveley, the district attorney who decided not to prosecute the young officer.
“I do not believe the State could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Sheskey was not acting lawfully in self-defense or defense of others which is the legal standard the State would have to meet to obtain a criminal conviction in this case,” he wrote.
Yet Graveley’s report clearly showed he couldn’t prosecute Sheskey because the officer did not commit a crime.
The most important facts, he wrote in the 87-page report on the shooting, were that officers responded to a domestic disturbance:
They were attempting to arrest Jacob Blake because he had a felony arrest warrant for domestic violence offenses and a sexual assault. Jacob Blake was armed with a knife and, after vigorously resisting the lawful arrest, he appeared to be attempting to flee in a vehicle that police had been told he did not have permission to operate and which had at least one child in the back. All of the decisions made by the officers on scene, particularly Officer Sheskey, were made based on these facts.
An outside expert and former Obama administration official concluded likewise. Yet Graveley clearly suggested that he would have charged Sheskey if he could have, and regretted not being able to do so.
Blake Lawsuit
For his part, Blake has sued Sheskey because the shooting left him paralyzed.
Oddly, the lawsuit admits the central fact that exonerates the officer of wrongdoing — that Blake resisted arrest and pulled a knife.
Of course, the lawsuit omits the key details that explain why police tried to detain him: He was wanted for felony sex-assault. He also had a record as a violent, dangerous thug.
The woman who lodged the complaint in July is the mother of the kids in the SUV that Blake tried to steal the day he was shot.
In 2015, Blake pulled a gun on a customer in a bar, then fled the scene. When cops finally stopped him in an SUV, they needed a dog to subdue him. They found a handgun, a box of ammunition, and two loaded magazines in the vehicle.
Blake’s blood-alcohol level was 0.144, almost twice Wisconsin’s 0.08 legal limit.
The sex-assault charge against Blake was dismissed, but he pleaded guilty to domestic abuse in November.
Blake’s shooting was an excuse for Antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists to plunder and pillage the city.
Kyle Rittenhouse killed two of them: child rapist Joseph Rosenbaum and convicted strangler Anthony Huber. Rittenhouse also shot a third, Gaige Grosskreutz, who is also a criminal.
Rittenhouse will stand trial for murder, although video clearly shows he defended himself when he shot the three goons.
