Man killed by officer before Milwaukee violence was 16th killed by police in Wisconsin this year
Police are investigating a black police officer’s fatal shooting of a black man in Milwaukee on Saturday that set off two nights of violence in the city.
On Saturday night, six businesses were set on fire, cars were overturned and shots were fired, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Washington Post (sub. req.) report. The violence continued on Sunday as protesters threw rocks, bricks and bottles at police and there was more gunfire, the Los Angeles Times reported. Four officers were injured, the Journal Sentinel reported, while an 18-year-old man was shot and taken to the hospital.
Police say the officer shot and killed Sylville Smith, 23, who fled a traffic stop Saturday afternoon. He was the 16th person shot and killed by police this year in Wisconsin, according to the Washington Post.
Police say Smith fled on foot and turned toward the officer with a gun before the officer opened fire, striking Smith in the chest and arm.
According to the New York Times, the violence may have seen spontaneous. “But for many in the city’s marginalized black community, it was an explosive release decades in the making,” the story says.
Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in the United States, according to the Times. The black unemployment rate in Milwaukee County is about 20 percent, nearly three times more than the rate for whites. In 2014, black people made up about 16 percent of the population in the metropolitan area but they received only 4 percent of home loans. About three out of four black students are in schools where at least 90 percent of the students are not white.
“Add to that the disrespect that many black people say the police show them,” the Times says, “and many of Milwaukee’s African-American residents are unsurprised by the volatile response after a police officer fatally shot a black man on Saturday.”
