MILWAUKEE – Two videos. Two men. Two police responses on the streets of Kenosha.
In the first video, taken Sunday afternoon, a Kenosha police officer fires seven shots at point blank range from behind 29-year-old Jacob Blake, a Black man, as Blake attempts to enter a gray SUV. A woman witnessing the scene can be heard screaming over and over: "Don't you do it! Don't you do it!"
Police have said Blake had a knife though it cannot be seen in the video. Blake remained at Froedtert Hospital as of Friday, paralyzed from the waist down, according to a lawyer for his family.
In the second video, taken Tuesday night, Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old, approaches officers shouldering an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle after allegedly shooting three people. Rittenhouse raises his arms in a gesture that appears to be surrendering, or possibly signaling that his hands are not on his weapon. Witnesses shout: "Hey, he just shot them! Hey, dude right here just shot them!"
Four armored vehicles, lights flashing, pass Rittenhouse, and several police cruisers can be seen nearby. No one stops Rittenhouse. He was charged Thursday with intentional and reckless homicide.
'People's worst fears' came alive in Kenosha:Guns, militia inject chilling dimension into protests
The differences between the two videos have prompted a fierce national debate over race and justice.
To some, the videos show clear racism.
In the Blake video, less than three minutes elapse from the time police arrive on the scene to the moment Officer Rusten Sheskey shoots Blake. Those viewers say police made an inadequate effort to de-escalate the conflict or settle it by other means.
In the Rittenhouse video, gunfire is heard after the city-imposed curfew, and a white teenager with an AR-15 semiautomatic walks past law enforcement vehicles. No one stops him, despite the cries from witnesses trying to alert police that he has just shot people.
To others who view the two videos, the blame lies not with Rittenhouse, but state and local authorities who allowed the protests in Kenosha to devolve into anarchy, leaving citizens to defend property and themselves.
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Still others say it is too early to draw conclusions from video of the Blake shooting. They say Blake did not follow orders from the officers and reached into a vehicle where, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, a knife lay on the floor.
The Kenosha Professional Police Association issued a statement Friday saying Blake was armed and wanted on an open warrant. The union also said he was tased twice by officers to no effect.
The Blake and Rittenhouse videos have their limitations and ambiguities, as brief snapshots of longer incidents always do. Neither shows the viewer what happened in the minutes before the video opens.
The Blake video does not show what happened when police arrived and displays little interaction between Blake and two officers prior to the shooting; any police orders to Blake cannot be heard.
The Rittenhouse video is just one of a number involving him. But it's unclear whether any of the officers in the video taken after the gunfire recognized him as he approached their vehicles.
About 600 people chanting "Black live matter" march peacefully Wednesday, August 26, 2020 near downtown in Kenosha, Wis. Violent unrest broke out after video of the shooting of Jacob Blake, 29, was widely disseminated on social media Sunday. Blake was shot in the back several times by a Kenosha police officer and left paralyzed.
Experts on race and justice weigh in
The contrast between the two scenes is neither new nor surprising, said Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of the book, "Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present."
"How long are Black people supposed to drop to their knees and put their face to the dirt because a police officer wants to play gun and cop? We've been doing this for 400 years," Browne-Marshall said after viewing the video of the Jacob Blake shooting.
"I'm deeply concerned," she said of the second video, showing an armed Rittenhouse being allowed to pass police. "This is not implicit bias. These disparities demonstrate blatant racism."
Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School and a former FBI agent, said it was "certainly fair" to compare the two videos.
"Obviously, each circumstance will have its own surrounding facts that need to be addressed. But there's no doubt that there's a stark difference in the way law enforcement reacts to a white suspect vs. a Black suspect."
German has worked undercover in domestic terrorism cases involving white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups and has lobbied on civil rights and national security issues for the ACLU.
He called the lack of police response to Rittenhouse "astonishing," even if the officers did not see who had fired the shots.
"They know there was a shooting, and there's a person walking toward them with a rifle," he said. "It's odd that they would not at least try to ascertain that person's identity. He's trying to surrender."
Police in riot gear confront protestors outside the Kenosha Police Department in Kenosha on Sunday, Aug. 23, 2020. Kenosha police shot a man Sunday evening, setting off unrest in the city after a video appeared to show the officer firing several shots at close range into the man's back
Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, watched both videos and said, "We need to know more about both incidents — but perhaps the best explanation for the different treatment stems from the fact that they're different situations."
Palmer stressed that the night of the video involving Rittenhouse "was chaotic."
"In that video," he continued, "it does appear that (police) are saying 'Injury ahead, get out of the road,' and they seem more focused on responding to that than to the fact that someone is walking towards them, granted with a weapon, but with his hands in the air.
"They are potentially receiving information about the report of a shooting and they are more focused on getting to that and rendering aid, and in the process, (overlooked) the fact that the person who committed that act was so close, walking toward them."
Palmer added that there is no indication that police heard or were aware of the witnesses shouting that Rittenhouse had shot people.
Ralph Richard Banks, a professor at Stanford Law School, and director and founder of Stanford Center for Racial Justice, said that watching the Rittenhouse video, "it was hard for me to make out what was going on."
Still, he added, "It's hard for anyone to avoid some very sobering conclusions. ... While law enforcement is meant to protect, and we think of law enforcement as (having the job) to serve anyone, it's hard not to wonder if they are protecting and serving some people and see their job as keeping them safe from other people."
Banks also stressed that it's important not to lose sight of the larger picture by focusing too much on a single incident.
"There are always ambiguities in what happens in any particular case," he said. "The evidence that something is wrong with society is the whole run of cases."