Tuesday, the Kenosha Police Department announced Officer Rusten Sheskey will return to work after being on administrative leave after shooting Jacob Blake seven times last August.
Sheskey will face no consequences for the shooting, which left Blake paralyzed from the waist down, according to NBC News.
Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said in a statement that after an investigation was conducted by the Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigations, it was found Sheskey could argue that he was acting in self-defense to a jury because Blake had a knife.
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Graveley shared the timeline of this decision and this case under Wisconsin Statute 175.47, starting with the investigation done by the DCI and the FBI, though the FBI helped in a smaller capacity. After the investigation, the case went to the district attorney in the county where the offense was committed for further investigation.
“In this situation, an exhaustive investigation was done,” Graveley said. “There’s more than 40 hours of squad video, there’s hundreds of pages of electronic information, there are almost 200 separate law enforcement reports and almost 1500 individual pages of police reports.”
Graveley said Sheskey will not be facing any criminal charges as a result of this incident, and stated Blake will also not have any charges filed against him.
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University of Wisconsin BIPOC Coalition responded to this announcement with a Tweet expressing their frustration.
Once again, we are left absolutely lost for words and the only ones we can muster is fuck this, fuck 12, and abolish the police.
To our black community members, we love you. Your life matters. We are here to support you however we can.
ABOLITION NOW. https://t.co/uogUKQ7qNP
— UW Madison BIPOC Coalition (@UWBIPOCCo) April 13, 2021
“To our black community members, we love you. Your life matters. We are here to support you however we can,” UW BIPOC Coalition said in the tweet.
Blake was shot a few months after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Sheskey’s reinstatement announcement comes during the trial of Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd.
As this trial continues, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was killed by police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota – just a few miles outside Minneapolis.
