It’s been three years since Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot several times in the back and paralyzed by a white Kenosha police officer.
Three years ago, the nation was experiencing heightened protests against police brutality and racism as a result of the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery.
The shooting of Jacob Blake sparked several nights of protest in Kenosha and surrounding cities. And it led to demands for improvements in police-community relations.
On the third anniversary of Blake’s shooting, what’s changed in the city since then?
Tanya McLean, the executive director of Leaders of Kenosha, weighed in. McLean says the organization was born in response to Blake’s shooting and works to ensure that Black and Brown people can thrive in Kenosha.
McClean says she remains wary, including after an incident at an Applebee’s last month. A video on social media appears to show an officer punching a Black man who the officer mistakenly thought was involved in a hit-and-run crash.
"So, in Kenosha, we have continued to meet with the administration — city administration, more specifically, the chief of police and people on his team to continue to speak about the issues that Black and brown people are coming to me about in terms of how Kenosha police officers are interacting with Black and Brown people within the community," McLean says.
McLean says the new police chief, Patrick Patton, has expressed his openness to conversations addressing equity within the community. Still, the latest incidents make her feel that action does not match what's being said. She says it's concerning.
"I get calls, videos about incidents that are going on in the community in terms of the police continuing to be harsh, and [using] excessive force, and just kind of running rogue and doing what they want to do, which is very problematic," McLean says.
"I wish I could say three years later that we've made these leaps and bounds, and you know policing is very different in this community, but after seeing what happened to this young African American family at Applebee's on July 20th, I continue to question what is being said," McLean says.
McLean says Black and brown people in Kenosha deserve to live with racist-free policing. "Every police officer that acts in this manner, should not be on the police force," she says.
In the midst of her concerns however, McLean says she has to remain hopeful.
"I personally believe that our chief — that this is important to him right? But I don't know if that is an overall arching feeling from city administration, down to his police officers," she says.
"That culture that they are a part of as bred what we see throughout this country in terms of, you know, they're so protected, so when they do things, you know, they just feel untouchable," McLean says. "The chief needs to, in my opinion, just really set a tone. He's a new chief, right, and he kind of has a clean slate, and he can do what he feels needs to be done that will bring his Police Department to a level where they are seen as people who are respected in the community, not feared and that's just what it should be."
We contacted the Kenosha Police Department for a response to McLean’s comments.
The department did not get back to us by deadline. But previously, the department announced that it had launched an internal investigation into the incident at Applebee’s.
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