KENOSHA, Wis. — Jacob Blake is conscious after being shot by a police officer this week, partially paralyzed from a bullet that severed his spinal cord and unaware of the protests that have spread across the country in his name, his family and lawyers said on Tuesday.
Standing in front of a heavily fortified courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., where demonstrations and destruction have rocked the city of 100,000, Mr. Blake’s parents and siblings denounced the police and pleaded for justice.
It was a “senseless attempted murder,” said Mr. Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., as he broke down and wept. “They shot my son seven times, like he didn’t matter.”
He said he had no confidence that the shooting of a Black man by a white officer would be fairly investigated.
That investigation is in the hands of the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, which has not released basic information about the shooting, including the name of the officer, who has been placed on administrative leave.
The Kenosha Police Department, which has also declined to provide details of what happened, has been at the center of criticism from demonstrators, who protested for a third night on Tuesday. Into the night, protesters threw lit fireworks, water bottles and bricks at police officers in riot gear who were behind a tall metal barrier near a county courthouse. During the extended standoff, the police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and repeatedly ordered the crowd out of the area or risk arrest. “The park is closed,” one deputy said through a megaphone. “It’s time to leave. Do it now.”
The demonstrations over Mr. Blake’s shooting have reverberated around the country this week, becoming a focus of protesters’ speeches and chants in cities including Madison, Wis., Portland, Ore., Minneapolis and New York.
The Kenosha Police Department is now facing intense public scrutiny. Its police chief, Daniel Miskinis, who has a reputation for focusing on administrative matters rather than personal interactions with Kenosha residents, has not made a public statement since the protests began. Critics of the department say it has been slow to adopt changes and build trust among residents, even after a national wave of calls for overhauling police departments in recent years.
“They can be very aggressive,” said James Hall, president of the Urban League of Racine and Kenosha, who has lived in Kenosha for a dozen years. He said some officers were more brusque with people of color. “Police officers draw guns a lot here just with routine traffic stops.”
The majority of the officers are good people, Mr. Hall said. “And a lot of these guys are nice guys,” he said. “However, when they put their uniform on, they can transform into different people, and it could just be the culture that they have to participate in just to keep their job.”
He added, “They don’t approach the situation with a de-escalation format.”
When Dayvin Hallmon was a college student in Kenosha, he would often get stopped by the Kenosha police, he said. “It was so bad that my white friends on campus said, ‘Dayvin, you get pulled over way too much,’” Mr. Hallmon recalled. “‘From now on, when we go places, we’re going to drive.’”
Mr. Hallmon, who is Black, said he continued to be hassled by the police even after he was elected, at age 23, to Kenosha County’s board of supervisors more than a decade ago. Mr. Hallmon, who resigned from the county board in 2018, is the founder and musical director of the Black String Triage Ensemble in Milwaukee, a group that plays at crime scenes and after shootings as a way to help heal the community.
“That was born out of all of the nasty and all of the awful that I saw and experienced in Kenosha,” Mr. Hallmon said.
The Kenosha Police Department has yet to provide officers with body cameras — a step many departments have taken amid calls for more transparency. Officials said budgets had been tight and questions about privacy had been raised; such cameras were expected to get funding in the city’s 2022 budget.
“It was one of those things where we felt we had time to work it out,” the Rev. Lawrence L Kirby II, a member of the city’s Police and Fire Commission until last year, said of the delay on cameras. “There wasn’t a sense of urgency because there wasn’t a big event to push the issue.”
The shooting of Mr. Blake was recorded by a neighbor in a video that spread across social media. Officials have said there may be recordings of the shooting on dashboard cameras in the officers’ cars, though none have been made public.
Mr. Blake, 29, was in stable condition at a hospital. Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the family, said he had been told that Mr. Blake was attempting to intervene in an argument between two women when the police arrived.
Compared to some city police departments, the Kenosha police — which have been involved in at least five fatal police shootings over the last 17 years — have not faced as much criticism until now.
“In my interactions, the Kenosha Police Department isn’t one of those stereotypical knock-the-heads kind of departments,” Anthony Kennedy, an alderman in Kenosha who lives two blocks from where the shooting took place, said. “That’s one of the reasons why the video is so disturbing. It didn’t jibe with what my view of the Police Department was.”
Officials from the Kenosha Police Department did not respond to requests for interviews but city officials said the department had more than 200 officers. Mr. Kirby, whose commission had oversight on hiring and recruitment, estimated that there were between 10 and 15 Black officers on the force, and other officials said efforts to recruit more Black and Latino officers had long been a priority.
“Sometimes that’s harder than people think,” Daniel Prozanski Jr., a Kenosha alderman, said. “If it were easy, everyone would have diverse departments.”
A different shooting by the Kenosha police, years ago, led to lengthy litigation and a change in the way police shootings are investigated in Wisconsin.
In 2004, Michael E. Bell Jr. was fatally shot after a traffic stop in front of his house. Mr. Bell, who was 21 and white, died from a gunshot wound through his right temple. His father, also Michael, has been seeking a full accounting from the Police Department ever since, even after winning a $1.75 million settlement with the city in a federal civil suit in 2010.
When the video of Mr. Blake emerged on Sunday night, the elder Mr. Bell said he thought, “Here we go again.”
But Mr. Bell said he was trying to reserve judgment on the latest shooting until the state investigation played out. Mr. Bell’s efforts in his son’s case were what led to a 2014 provision that the Division of Criminal Investigation — not local officials — look into police shootings in Wisconsin.
Kenosha, a small city on the shore of Lake Michigan whose streets are typically quiet by late evening, has been roiled by the demonstrations, fires and looting this week.
Sheriff David Beth of Kenosha County said the police were outnumbered, struggling to respond quickly enough to all of the calls for help. “We’ve got 200 officers, I don’t know how many armored vehicles,” he said. “It’s not enough. It’s a battle we aren’t able to keep up with.”
The most extensive destruction happened late Monday in Uptown, a largely Black neighborhood with a business district of stores, restaurants and a community hall.
People set buildings on fire, prompting a line of National Guard members to prevent anyone from getting close as firefighters worked to douse the flames.
“This is our town,” said Mike Mehlan, 33, a chef, as he stared at the buildings, stunned.
One resident said he had little problem with burning businesses to spur social change and reform to policing. “It’s unfortunate, but it has to be done,” said Wayne Gardner, who lives around the corner.
But it was that type of destruction that Mr. Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, said she strongly opposed, as she told reporters that she had been praying for the country to heal.
“I’ve noticed a lot of damage,” she said. “It doesn’t reflect my son or my family.”
Kenosha was under a curfew again on Tuesday night.
Julie Bosman reported from Kenosha, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from New York. Reporting was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar from New York, Mike Baker from Portland, Ore., Hallie Golden from Seattle, Maria Cramer from Maplewood, N.J., and Yonette Joseph and Tiffany May from Hong Kong.
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