The Rioters Had It Right: White Milwaukee Police Chief Withheld Camera Footage. Black Man Unarmed when Shot 2nd Time by Cop Charged with Murder

[Racists Tell Half Truths All the Time. White mayor in August after police murder.] From [HERE] and [HERE] A Black Milwaukee police officer fatally shot a Black man in August just after the man had thrown his gun away and lay on the ground unarmed, the authorities said on Thursday as they charged the officer with homicide.

The officer, Dominique Heaggan-Brown, 24, killed Sylville K. Smith, 23, seconds after Mr. Smith fled on foot after a traffic stop. The shooting set off two nights of rioting here.

Police officials have said that Mr. Smith was carrying a stolen handgun with a large-capacity magazine, and that he pointed it at the officer before the officer fired. But the criminal complaint filed on Thursday gives a somewhat different picture, based on video recorded by body cameras worn by Officer Heaggan-Brown and his partner. That video has not been made public.

The criminal complaint says the Black man was unarmed when the officer fired the shot that killed him. The complaint says the body-camera video showed Smith was on the ground, unarmed and had his hands near his head when Heaggan-Brown shot him a second time in the chest.

Specifically, in the video, Mr. Smith “turns his head and upper body toward the officers,” according to an investigator’s affidavit cited in the complaint. “He then raises the gun upward while looking in the direction of the officers and throws the gun over the fence into the yard.”

As Mr. Smith was raising the gun, the complaint says, Officer Heaggan-Brown fired his own weapon, the bullet passed through Mr. Smith’s arm and Mr. Smith fell on his back. “Heaggan-Brown is observed standing a short distance from Smith with his weapon pointed down at Smith when Heaggan-Brown discharges a second shot from his weapon,” the complaint says.

Mr. Smith was hit in the chest.

The Milwaukee County district attorney’s office charged Mr. Heaggan-Brown, who was fired in October, with first-degree reckless homicide, which is punishable by up to 60 years in prison. The case was investigated by the State Department of Justice.

Heaggan-Brown, who is also black, shot Smith following a traffic stop on the city’s north side. Police have not offered any legal jusitification for the traffis stop. 

[The media has painted this police brutality episode as a Black on Black incident. Elite whites and their media hope you will buy what they work so hard at selling - that Black on Black violence and any other Black on Black hate going on in other contexts has nothing to do with white supremacy/racism. What's really real is that a Black cop would never do this shit to a white person and apparently never has. In reality, 'the black on black criminal is a white racist in black skin - a person who has internalized white racist attitudes and has identified with his victimizers and expresses his victimization by victimizing other black people. Filled with self hating venom, his behavior reflexts the absence of an appropriate black and african identity.' [MORE]. Black on black violence is a result of white supremacy. In all contexts a Black government servant programmed in service of white domination is just as dangerous as a racist.] [MORE]]

Police Chief Ed Flynn, who is white, said shortly after the shooting that the incident began when police stopped a suspicious rental car. Smith bolted from the vehicle and ran through a residential neighborhood. Heaggan-Brown gave chase and opened fire after Smith turned toward the officer and began to raise his gun despite Heaggan-Brown’s warnings to drop it, Flynn said. The police have not explained what made the vehicle suspicious and why it was stopped. 

The neighborhood where Smith was killed is predominantly black. Heaggan-Brown grew up there and has lived near the shooting scene since at least 2012.

Police didn’t release either man’s race the day of the shooting. That night, the neighborhood erupted in violence. Demonstrators burned six businesses and a police squad car. 

Flynn released more details the following day, including Heaggan-Brown’s race and that his body camera showed Smith was armed. But Flynn didn’t release the video and more violence broke out that night. Protesters again threw rocks and bottles at police, and an 18-year-old man was shot and injured. Police arrested about 40 people over the course of the three nights. 

Fred Royal, president of the Milwaukee chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., criticized the white Mayor and police chief for not releasing the body camera footage. “To think that a community does not have the capacity to fully appreciate what they see on a video, in this day and age, is just egregious in my perspective,” Mr. Royal said.

Flynn fired Heaggan-Brown in October after he was charged with sexual assault in an unrelated case. According to a criminal complaint, Heaggan-Brown and another man went to a bar late on the night of Aug. 14 where they drank heavily and watched television coverage of the riots. The man told investigators that Heaggan-Brown bragged that he could do anything he wanted without repercussions, and that he woke up to Heaggan-Brown sexually assaulting him.

The Black cop also was charged with soliciting two other people for sex several times since December 2015. He faces two felony counts of second-degree sexual assault, two misdemeanor prostitution counts and one felony count of capturing an intimate representation of a person without consent.