The Dane County District Attorney in Wisconsin will not press charges against the cop, Matt Kenny, who shot and killed 19-year-old Tony Robinson on March 6 of this year.
The District Attorney, Ishmael Ozanne, said that the officer feared for his life and claimed self defense.
Officer Kenny was responding to an emergency call about a man obstructing traffic. Authorities have also said the man was involved in an assault. A confrontation occurred and now Ozanne is officially saying that what Kenny did was a “lawful use of deadly force.”
Protests occurred throughout Wisconsin after the shooting, as people were upset, especially since Robinson was unarmed when he was killed. His death is one of a long line of people who have already been killed by the police this year alone.
Robinson was mixed?and this has perpetuated the much-needed conversation about police encounters with people of color.
As we speak, according to CNN live, protests are underway in Wisconsin after this breaking news of no charges for Tony’s killer.
So many of us can’t understand how it is vital to use deadly force as much as we see it used in the United States. Especially in comparison to other countries. It becomes harder to understand when these victims are unarmed. HOW scared can one be when you are facing an unarmed person?
Robinson’s family and attorney have spoken out about this, and according to live news coverage of the press conference, his grandmother said that the decision was “politics, not justice.”
She also spoke about knowing who Tony actually was, and that media portrayals are not always fair.
This shines a light on how quick the media is to dehumanize victims, especially ones of color. We see their rap sheet brought up yet when whites are the actual killers, we are quick to jump to their “mental status.”
Overall, the United States needs to start seeing people of color as human beings. We need to find a way to massively decrease cop killings because this happens far too often. While it is possible to decrease the amount of killings, we can never fully get rid of them. Knowing this, we have to take killing someone more seriously. It shouldn’t be SO easy to claim self-defense, as many of these national cowards (Darren Wilson, George Zimmerman, and others) have done. When someone kills another person, it should be rare that they just automatically get off. But when you are a cop, we see this being easy as pie. And this HAS to change.
