Kenosha killings: ACLU calls for resignation of County Sheriff David Beth and Police Chief Daniel Miskinis
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has spoken out on the killing of two individuals during the violent protests in Kenosha against the shooting of Jacob Blake by the cops last Sunday, August 23. A 17-year-old boy from Illinois named Kyle Rittenhouse, a supporter of President Donald Trump and the Blue Lives Matter, was accused of carrying a lethal weapon despite being a minor and opening fire that killed the duo on Tuesday, August 25, besides injuring another person. Rittenhouse was arrested on Wednesday, August 26.
As the issue snowballed, the ACLU publicly sought resignations of two of Kenosha’s top law-enforcement officers. “We are calling for the immediate resignation of Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis and Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth,” it said in a Twitter thread. In another tweet, it said: "We're calling for these resignations following the lead of organizers on the ground in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the shooting of Jacob Blake by police and the murder of two protestors who were shot by a 17-year-old participating in an armed counter-protest."
The human rights body also tweeted: “Sheriff David Beth’s deputies not only socialized with white supremacist counter-protestors on Tuesday but allowed the shooter to leave the scene. Sheriff Beth also previously called for five people of color who had been arrested for shoplifting to ‘be put into warehouses’."
The ACLU slammed Police Chief Daniel Miskinis saying the latter blamed the victims for their own deaths in Tuesday’s shootings. “During the police department's first press conference in response to the Blake shooting and subsequent murders committed at protests, Police Chief Daniel Miskinis blamed the victims in Tuesday night's shooting for their own deaths,” yet another tweet posted by it said. Miskinis said after the shootings that they would not have happened had the protesters and the accused gunman abided by the city’s newly imposed 8 pm-curfew.
The ACLU also warned that if neither of the two top policemen stepped down immediately, it would ask Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian to demand Miskinis’s removal with the Kenosha Police and Fire Commission and Beth’s removal with Governor Tony Evers. Both Antaramian and Evers are from the Democratic Party which has been accused by President Trump of failing to protect law and order in various states and cities they rule.
The local police have been accused of initially allowing Rittenhouse to walk away unopposed after the shootings even as those present at the scene shouted for his arrest. Beth, however, denied that the police did anything like that although it has been widely reported by now that the teenager has high respect for the cops and has an old affiliation with local police cadet programs.
Beth's vicious words for Black suspects in 2018
In 2018, Beth said at a news briefing that a society “has to come to a threshold where there are some people that aren't worth saving”. He said on that occasion that warehouses needed to be made where such people needed to be locked away for the rest of their lives. He also said: "In this country, in this community, in this state, we have to get to the point where we will no longer put up with the garbage people that fill our communities. They are a cancer to our society." Beth’s words came in the wake of arrest of five Black youth on charges of theft in a mall and a car crash.