The city of Wauwatosa will pay officer Joseph Mensah the equivalent of 13 months pay plus an additional $15,000, along with what he is owed for vacation and sick time amongst other benefits once his resignation becomes official at the end of the month.
Mensah has been suspended since July after mounting pressure from the public to fire him after he fatally shot 17-year-old Alvin Cole. It was Mensah’s third fatal shooting in a span of five years. No criminal charges were ever filed.
Kimberley Motley is the attorney for the families of the three people shot by Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah. She says that while they are happy to see Mensah go, the fight is not over.
“We believe that if [Mensah’s settlement agreement] shows that he can be on another police department, that doesn’t really solve the problem,” says Motley.
After Mensah’s killing of Antonio Gonzalez, she says he should have received more scrutiny and any help that he needed. But now that he has since killed two more people in the line of duty he should have been terminated, says Motley.
The goal now is to get access to and release Mensah’s settlement agreement and other documents in hopes of having a public discussion around how Mensah was supervised and why the Wauwatosa police department did not terminate him, according to Motley.
“I don’t see how the community can actually heal or move forward if [local leaders’] actions are still perpetuating no police accountability, continuing to do the same things that they did before this was all brought to the forefront. We can’t heal with that, we need actual things to happen,” she says.
Some of those actions that Motley wants to see is the termination of Wauwatosa Police Chief Barry Weber and the dismissal of all tickets issued to non-violent protesters during protests for police accountability.
She also notes they plan to file additional lawsuits against officer Mensah soon.
“This fight is far from over,” says Motley.
