Wisconsin also has the highest rate of black unemployment of any state, and it leads the country in the number of black men behind bars, with 1 out of 8 in prison or jail as of the 2010 census, another study found. The 24-year-old officer who shot the man has been placed on administrative duty.
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At the same news conference, Mayor Tom Barrett said a still image pulled from the footage clearly showed a gun in Smith’s hand as he fled a traffic stop Saturday.
Famed for its breweries, Milwaukee is also one of the most segregated cities in America, with a large concentration of unemployed black men in the inner city separated from the mostly white suburbs. Republican nominee Donald Trump will visit and participate in a previously scheduled televised town hall meeting with Fox News host Sean Hannity, raising the possibility of protests similar to those that have followed the candidate elsewhere during the campaign. The confrontations began after a Milwaukee officer shot and killed a 23-year-old man on Saturday who officials say was armed and had a criminal record.
Smith’s death was just the latest in a string of shootings involving police and black men to spark demonstrations and protests.
Milwaukee has experienced two nights of unrest, when protesters fired gunshots and threw rocks, bricks, and bottles at police and bystanders.
After watching the officer’s body camera footage, Flynn said Smith had run “a few dozen feet” and turned toward the officer while holding a gun.
Wisconsin Gov. Walker had activated the National Guard on Sunday in case more trouble flared, but despite the violence, police said the guardsmen were not called in. Violence erupted as the night went on; six businesses were burned, and seven squad cars were damaged, Flynn said.
In addition, an 18-year-old was shot around 11p.m. and suffered a serious injury, police said.
A nighttime curfew for teenagers in the USA city of Milwaukee will be strictly enforced police said Monday, following two nights of violence over the fatal police shooting of a black man. One officer suffered injuries from glass fragments in the eye after someone threw a concrete brick through the window of a squad vehicle. According to police, Smith was carrying a gun when he was shot twice by an officer who has yet to be identified.
An internal report charting data from 2005 to 2014 showed police responded to life-threatening situations within 8.4 minutes in District 2 on the predominantly white south side but took 15 minutes to respond in District 7 on the largely black north side.
The Milwaukee mayor on Sunday said that the damage from Saturday’s unrest was “unlike anything I’ve seen”, he said. Businesses burned, gunshots rang out and police in riot gear were pelted with rocks and other objects.
When asked about the violence, Neal said: “People stuck together and they are trying to stand up”, for their rights. Police took the injured person to a hospital in an armoured vehicle.
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Milwaukee police sparred with protesters, activists and rioters in the Sherman Park neighborhood of Milwaukee over the weekend and into early Monday morning, making 14 arrests. “We want everybody to feel our pain”. Barrett said he hoped the officer’s body-camera video could be released soon. “If you want to address poverty, if you want to address living conditions, you want to address housing – all of those things are legitimate issues…but if you’ve got neighborhoods where businesses are burnt down, where people are afraid to live, it’s only going to make those problems more hard”.
