OIS in Kenosha Wisconsin, civil unrest

[Sal Picante]

They just announced no charges... https://apnews.com/article/kyle-ritt...66978e5523a912

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin prosecutor announced Tuesday that he will not file criminal charges against a white police officer who shot a Black man in the back in Kenosha last summer, leaving him paralyzed and setting off sometimes violent protests in the city.

Additionally, Rittenhouse has plead "no-guilty" to all the charges... https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/95359...to-all-charges

Kyle Rittenhouse, a young gunman facing criminal charges in the killing of two men and the serious injury of a third this summer in Kenosha, Wis., entered not guilty pleas to all charges during an arraignment Tuesday.

[Totem Polar]

the reporting leaves out so many relevant details.

[Guerrero]

Hopefully cool heads and even colder weather will deter any shenanigans.



Oh, who am I kidding?

[farscott]

Hopefully cool heads and even colder weather will deter any shenanigans.



Oh, who am I kidding?

It is cloudy and 31F right now. Going down to the low 20s overnight. Hopefully it is cold enough and humid enough to deter the most of the troublemakers. And hopefully the rest can be treated how they so richly deserve.

[Guerrero]

Update on the officer involved:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/...ty/7211243002/

[trailrunner]

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/virginia...e-defense-fund

Virginia police lieutenant fired after donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund

WASHINGTON (FOX 5 DC) - The Virginia city of Norfolk has fired a police lieutenant after news reports that said he donated to and expressed support for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager accused of killing two people during a police brutality protest in Wisconsin last summer.

City officials announced Tuesday that police Lt. William Kelly had been "relieved of duty" after an internal investigation.

"His egregious comments erode the trust between the Norfolk Police Department and those they are sworn to serve. The City of Norfolk has a standard of behavior for all employees, and we will hold staff accountable," City Manager Chip Filer said in a statement.

The development came after news organizations including The Virginian-Pilot reported that they had obtained data from a Christian crowdfunding website that was hacked, apparently showing an initially anonymous $25 donation to Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund was linked to Kelly’s work email address.

According to the newspaper, the donation carried the comment: "God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong."

[LittleLebowski]

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/virginia...e-defense-fund

That is such bullshit. I hope that he can sue.

[GyroF-16]

So the police LT’s “egregious comments” were made anonymously (or so he thought), and certainly not in an official capacity.
This sounds like the Thought Police.

But, somehow associating his work email with the donation was probably not wise - from a PERSEC perspective, not an inappropriate behavior perspective.

[WobblyPossum]

The article I read earlier stated the Lieutenant may have donated “anonymously” but he used his official department email to do it. By using his department email and including comments about how rank and file law enforcement supported Rittenhouse, he was acting in an official capacity. I can’t imagine the police department in 2021 in which that isn’t an egregious violation of multiple policies. If the Lieutenant wanted to donate as a private citizen using his personal email address, I’m sure he would be fine right now. Instead he chose to do so as a representative of the Norfolk police department and the government of Norfolk, VA. You can’t do things like that.

[Moylan]

The comments cited in the article above don't include anything about the rank and file supporting Rittenhouse. Is there more to the comment?

More importantly, in what world does using a work email address turn an obviously personal email into a public statement? I'm registered for this site using my work email address. I don't have any real presumption of privacy when it comes to my work email, but then I don't say or do things online that I would be ashamed for my employer to unethically discover. Keeping that in mind, there is no sense in which anyone could reasonably conclude that simply because I send something with a work email address that I am doing so in some "official capacity." It's my email account. Come to think of it, I'm typing this on a work-issued computer. Maybe it works different for cops, who are told in no uncertain terms that their work email accounts MUST be used SOLELY for official communications. But apart from that, I don't agree that he was speaking as a representative of Norfolk police.

This holds especially strongly since the comments were made anonymously, which clearly shows he did not intend for his comments to be linked to his public persona. What's the deal with the city using the fruits of the poisoned tree here, and firing this guy because some hacker illegally accessed this information? I recognize that employment stuff like this isn't the same as criminal court, but why should this officer have this private stuff used against him? Doesn't that just encourage more and more of this kind of blackmail to occur?

Last thought, if you can't take a public position on an incident like the Rittenhouse case because doing so means you're speaking in an official capacity, then why can the city fire this cop anyway? That represents a public position on the Rittenhouse case, and the city manager should then be fired by his own standards. Unless, of course, the standard is simply that you MUST accept one narrative or you're canceled. Which, of course, it is. And that's the deep problem here, IMHO.

Sorry to ramble. This kind of thing pisses me off to no end.