The Shooting of Jacob Blake-One Year Later

It has been exactly one year since the police shooting of Jacob Blake and ensuing riots that followed. It all started with a 9-1-1 call that came in on August 23rd 2020 at 5:11 PM a woman who said that her boyfriend took her keys and wouldn’t give them back.

Police responded and Blake was shot and left paralyzed by Kenosha Police officer Rusten Sheskey after an attempt to subdue Blake-who had a warrant out for his arrest at the time- and take him into custody. Video of the shooting went quickly viral sparking outage and violence. Before the riots were over three days later, two people were dead and millions of dollars of property damage was done.

A year on the city has worked with minority groups and instituted police reforms-not the least of which was the addition last week of police body cams and creation of the Kenosha “CORE” violence interruption group.

Sheskey was not charged in the shooting and returned to the force-although not on the street-this spring. Activists held a rally in Kenosha Saturday calling once again for-in part-Sheskey’s removal from the force. Jacob Blake Senior says that he believes that there are two systems of justice.

The event’s featured speaker was Robin Williams-a former Marine turned police officer who is now running for Mayor of Houston, Texas. She tried to strike a balance between supporting good cops and calling out “bad apples.”

The rally was attended by about 200 people and is just one of the events planned this week to commemorate the events from a year ago.