monitor the uh kenosha wisconsin
district attorney uh spelling out why he
has not
decided to file charges against the uh
white officer involved
and two other officers are directly
involved uh
in the shooting last october of jacob
blake you might recall he was the
african american
who was shot seven times in the back and
it led to a great many protests it
it sort of chronicled a year in which
attacks on a young african-american sort
of
electrified a nation there were protests
all across the country whether you're
going back to george
floyd or brianna taylor uh but in this
particular case uh they're preparing for
potentially the worst or uprisings
uh tonight in in the kenosha area the
governor of wisconsin
has already indicated that is tony evers
that he was going to mobilize 500
national guard
troops to be at the ready in kenosha
tonight
whether more troops will be called in
because of this decision
most had expected charges of some sort
would be filed
they are not the district attorney is
outlining his rationale for that not
being
the case let's get to read from andy
mccarthy on all of this
uh andy this was one of those signature
moments last year
and that triggered the likes of rachel
riots and
anger uh and this was one of those cases
that we knew would take some time to
determine whether charges would be filed
it took
obviously a little longer than thought
but the end result is no
charges what do you make of it
well you know neil trying to make a
charging decision is really a clinical
exercise which means you have to
sort of tune out all of the political
narrative so
what's supposed to happen is the race of
the the people who are involved is not
supposed to matter you're supposed to
put yourself in the position that
of those people who made the decisions
they made uh in the moment
and the criminal law is simply not the
answer
to every tragedy so the the question
with these police officers is not
whether they did everything right it's
whether you could charge them with
murder
that is did they intentionally take a
life here
or did they act in a way that was so
reckless that you could say they acted
with depraved
indifference and as the district
attorney
just said before we cut away from him um
as a prosecutor you have an ethical
responsibility that if you do not
believe you have proof beyond a
reasonable doubt that could
convince a rational jury to convict
it's unethical to bring the charges and
i think
you know ultimately that's what they
decided that doesn't mean
that there's no other resolution here
doesn't mean there won't be civil
litigation doesn't mean there won't be
some kind of a lawsuit the narrow
question here was
can you charge these police officers
with murder
well obviously uh the family's attorney
and the blake family attorney and
the nationally renowned civil rights
attorney ben crump and a lot of his
co-counsels
not too pleased with this decision and
i'm sure that doesn't surprise you
quoting here
we are immensely disappointed in kenosha
district attorney michael gravely's
decision
not to charge the officers involved in
this horrific
shooting they go on to say we feel this
decision failed not only jacob and his
family
but the community that protested and
abandoned
justice so there is predictable anger um
this was one of those iconic events a
lot of people associate with 2020 and
other attacks
on on african americans that that is
going to be seen in those terms
and you have a white district attorney
could i'll show
you you know outlining that i'm just
wondering now
given the governor's move to get
national guard troops at the ready
just in case i imagine this sort of
festers for a while
at a minimum well yeah i think that the
clinical exercise of whether you can
bring
charges which again is supposed to tune
out all the
politics of this exists in a different
plane than the politics does the
politics
is obviously very ugly like for example
you mentioned the
you know the racial difference between
the officers and and
mr blake uh and the fact that you know
there was
seven shots so the the film looks
gruesome
on the other hand as a matter of law it
was either a
a righteous shooting or it wasn't if it
wasn't then it probably would have been
wrong
if there was one shot and if it was it
doesn't matter if it was seven
or more so you know the considerations
that you make
when you're deciding whether you have
enough evidence to prove something
beyond a reasonable doubt
are very different from the way that
something plays
as a political matter and i i you know
judging from
just inferring from what you're asking i
think we can both acknowledge that the
the politics of this is going to be a
lot uglier
you know i also wonder whether with the
best of intentions and the
um the the prosecutor in this particular
case the district attorney i'm sorry
it might have rubbed salt in the womb by
adding um that jacob blake himself will
not
be facing any charges um i i'm just
wondering where in other words where
this goes
yeah that's a neil that's a great point
because
there is based on everything that we
learned about the reporting about this
there seems like there is at least a
possibility that there could have been a
charge
against blake whether this was the right
time to say
you know under the circumstances in our
discretion we're not going to charge him
either
i i don't know if i would have done that
especially since he opened the
prosecutor did
by saying you know look we're here to
talk about a very narrow thing
which is is there proof beyond a
reasonable doubt that these police
officers should be charged
with murder i think i might have just
left it at that
all right um they did not leave it at
that we'll see what the fallout will be
from this hope that the cooler calmer
heads prevail tonight in kenosha
wisconsin
but the kenosha district attorney for
those who just sat two to get here
will not be filing charges against the
police officers involved in the shooting
attack
um that's how jacob blake's lawyers had
referred to it
back in august when he was shot seven
times in the back
no charges being filed at all in kenosha
national guard troops at the ready to
try to keep the peace
hopefully it won't be necessary but
they're there just in case