I saw an early report on the background of the shooter this morning and decided to wait for confirmation – and here it is:
A 17-year-old has been arrested in connection with a fatal shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at a protest sparked by the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man.
The suspect, Kyle Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, was taken into custody Wednesday and is being held in the Lake County Judicial System pending an extradition hearing to transfer custody to Wisconsin, the Village of Antioch Police Department said in a Facebook post.
Authorities in Kenosha County had issued an arrest warrant for him earlier Wednesday on a charge of first-degree intentional homicide, the department said. The Kenosha Police Department has not commented on the arrest. [NBC News]
The Guardian critically notes:
Before the shooting, the presence of white armed men at the Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha on Tuesday night prompted criticism from protesters – and some support from law enforcement.
In a widely circulating video from Tuesday night, Kenosha police can be heard thanking and tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle to what appear to be armed civilians walking the streets.
“We appreciate you being here,” an officer is heard saying over a loudspeaker.
But David Best, the county sheriff, told media outlets after the shooting that people patrolling the streets in Kenosha were a “like a vigilante group”, and said that the shooting was evidence of why suggestions to deputize citizens to help law enforcement contain the unrest in the city had been a bad idea.
Not “like”. They are a vigilante group. I don’t know if Sheriff Best is responsible for Kenosha, but this is the fault of a law enforcement agency that collectively doesn’t understand that it is responsible, along with any governmental group deputized by an authorized leader, for the proper management of the situation.
Civilians are untrained and, worse, unscreened. While a slightly older version of Rittenhouse might have been able to worm his way into law enforcement, there would be a better chance of being caught out as a rabid racist, of even being caught in some minor crime first.
There’s 0% chance of catching an unscreened civilian with evil intentions.
A properly law enforcement agency would have taken one look at that war weapon and taken it away Rittenhouse, along with all the rest, and justified it as a threat to the public safety.
The police just had their fingers burned, and BLM has suffered a tragic loss – people protesting for justice, gunned down by some damn kid who ingested inferior, discredited ideas.
