Perhaps more detail, transparency would have calmed tensions? From [HERE] A crowd threw rocks at Milwaukee police officers and set a patrol car on fire late Saturday night in the neighborhood where an officer shot and killed a fleeing armed man earlier in the day, the police said.
Officers, some in riot gear, confronted the crowd, which had as many as 100 people at one point, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. It also said that the crowd attacked its reporters and a photographer.
Arrests were being made as officers tried to disperse the crowd, the police said on Twitter. The clash comes after a series of tense episodes in Milwaukee involving residents and police, including one just before the Fourth of July weekend near Sherman Park.
The violence erupted after the police said an officer killed an alleged armed Black suspect. The police said two uniformed officers stopped two people in a car at about 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. The police did not provide details on why the car was stopped. Mayor Tom Barrett simply said the police stopped a "suspicious vehicle" but did not provide any details about why it was suspicious.
According to cops, both occupants ran from the car. During the pursuit, an officer shot one man, who was armed with a semiautomatic handgun, the police said. The gunman, described by the police as a 23-year-old Black man died at the scene. His name was not released. The police did not share any details from any police reports created about the incident. The police did not say what happened to the other man.
Milwaukee Police Assistant Chief Bill Jessup told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel newspaper it wasn't clear if the gun was pointed at the officer [which would mean the gun was in the dead man's hand?].
"Those additional facts will come out in the coming days," Jessup said. He told the paper, "That officer had to make a split-second decision when the person confronted him with a handgun." [MORE]
However, during his midnight press conference, Mayor Barrett said the officer pursuing the 23-year-old man ordered him to drop his gun. The man didn't and the officer fired several times, the mayor said.
The man was hit twice, once in the chest and once in the arm. He said police determined there were 23 rounds in the man's gun.
The handgun was taken in a burglary in March, the police said. The officer was not named, but officials said he was 24 and had been an officer for three years. He was placed on administrative duty. [MORE]
Barrett said the officer had a body camera and Barrett said he believes the body camera was operational at the time of the shooting. Cops have not released any video.