HomeMulticultural-MultiracialKamala Harris pushes for charges in Jacob Blake shooting

Kamala Harris pushes for charges in Jacob Blake shooting

Kamala Harris comments on Jacob Blake shooting. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Creative Commons.

Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris said based on the evidence that she has seen, the Kenosha, Wis. police officer who shot Jacob Blake should be charged with a crime.

On Sunday, a White police officer named Rusten Sheskey shot Blake in the back seven times in front of Blake’s kids as he was walking to his vehicle. Blake was unarmed.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Blake was trying to get into his car after officers tased him and were trying to stop him from leaving.

Officials say Blake was trying to break up a fight at the residence where the incident happened. Police officers showed up after Blake’s girlfriend called them saying Blake was not supposed to be on the property, reports the state’s DOJ. The officers were trying to arrest him.

In an interview with the Today show, Harris said “I believe there should be a thorough investigation, and based on what I’ve seen, it seems that the officer should be charged.”

Blake, 29, is now paralyzed from the waist down, according to Politico.

As protests against police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement seemed to decline, the shooting of Blake reignited many nationwide protests.

“The man was going to his car. He didn’t appear to be armed. And if he was not armed, the use of force that was seven bullets coming out of a gun at close range in the back of the man, I don’t see how anybody could reason that that was justifiable,” Harris said.

Harris is a former prosecutor and attorney general for the state of California.

She said Blake’s alleged refusal to comply with the officers still is not enough to warrant firing a gun into Blake’s back, reports USA Today.

She also said the speakers at the Republican National Convention have failed to discuss the police violence that Blacks and other colored communities continue to face.

“We have too many Black men in America who have been subject to this kind of conduct and it’s got to stop,” Harris said during the interview.

Referring to the speakers at the RNC, she said, “I have yet to see these people who profess to be national leaders speak about the issue of the killing of unarmed Black men, Brown men, indigenous men in our country.”

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