Wisconsin Cops Forcefully Arrest Black Man In Restaurant/​they Had The Wrong Guy

An inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion is under­way and Kenosha activists are speak­ing out after a video shared to social media appears to show a Kenosha police offi­cer repeat­ed­ly strik­ing a man the offi­cer wrong­ly thought was involved in a seri­ous hit-and-run crash.

Police would lat­er find their sus­pects inside a bath­room of a restaurant.

The inci­dent took place July 20 at the Applebee’s off Highway 50 in Kenosha. A crash hap­pened at Highway 50 and Green Bay Road at about 11 p.m.

Police said wit­ness­es described two Black males and one Black female who fled on foot toward Applebee’s. Another wit­ness stat­ed that the female was car­ry­ing a child, accord­ing to police.

An employ­ee at the restau­rant said some “sus­pi­cious peo­ple” were inside the restau­rant and they believed may be “involved,” accord­ing to police. The employ­ee then direct­ed offi­cers to two peo­ple, includ­ing the man seen being arrest­ed in the video, who is Black and hold­ing a baby.

“I’m not doing s — ! Let me the f— go!” the man yelled out as offi­cers attempt to take the baby from him and take him into cus­tody. The baby is even­tu­al­ly removed from the man’s arms and offi­cers throw the man down to his stom­ach. A moment lat­er, an offi­cer appears to begin strik­ing the man on or near his head, yelling com­mands of “Put your hands behind your back!”

Police said, “The male was being detained as the crash was being inves­ti­gat­ed. The male attempt­ed to leave against offi­cers orders and was restrained. He resist­ed and the inci­dent that was caught on cam­era unfold­ed from there.”

The man, accord­ing to police, was not respon­si­ble for the hit-and-run. However, police said he has been charged with dis­or­der­ly con­duct, resist­ing, and obstruct­ing an offi­cer. The female who was with him also received the same charges, and pos­ses­sion of marijuana.

Police then dis­cov­ered the “indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for the hit-and-run” inside the bath­room of the Applebee’s, police said in a statement.

A group of Kenosha advo­cates and activists held a press con­fer­ence Wednesday night. It was orga­nized by Leaders of Kenosha, a non­prof­it that describes itself as “a con­duit for social, trans­for­ma­tive, and restora­tive jus­tice,” accord­ing to its web­site.

Tanya McLean, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Leaders of Kenosha, said “it’s ridicu­lous” that the man was charged and the offi­cers should be ones fac­ing charges. She said there was a com­plete lack of de-esca­la­tion from offi­cers. “It just does­n’t seem that any­one was a voice of rea­son that had a uni­form on,” she said.

“A com­plete lack of dis­re­gard for peo­ple that don’t look like you, that don’t have that uni­form on,” she said. “What is it that just fright­ens you? Because we know that when peo­ple are fear­ful they act in irra­tional ways. So what is that you are so afraid of?”

McLean men­tioned the Kenosha police shoot­ing of Jacob Blake in 2020 as an exam­ple of offi­cers act­ing through fear.

“We don’t want to stand here and have these con­ver­sa­tions about peo­ple being harmed when they’re sim­ply hav­ing a meal with their fam­i­ly,” McLean said.

McLean said the man is from Illinois and he was there to have a meal and got up to change his baby’s dia­per. “I’m not an attor­ney, but if you’re not under arrest, you can walk away, they did­n’t know who these peo­ple were,” she said.

Alex Whitaker of the Kenosha Coalition for Dismantling Racism called for a “thor­ough and trans­par­ent” inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent. Kenosha police said the depart­ment will con­duct an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion on the offi­cer’s use of force. Whitaker request­ed a third-par­ty inves­ti­ga­tion as well.