Peacefully, Madison processes police shooting
A series of protests and vigils continued Sunday in Madison, Wis., as the stunned city processed the shooting of an unarmed black teen by a police officer Friday night.
A modest memorial sits near the site where Tony Robinson, 19, was shot by Officer Matt Kenny, a 12-year department veteran who shot and killed another suspect eight years ago in what Police Chief Mike Koval described as a suicide-by-cop.
Kenny has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of Friday's shooting by the state Department of Criminal Investigation.
The city of about 250,000 — a bastion of liberalism, the state's capital and home to the University of Wisconsin — has adhered to Koval's plea for calm. A protest Saturday drew scores of demonstrators but produced no violence.
The shooting came just days after the Justice Department declined to bring criminal charges against the white former police officer in Ferguson, Mo., who fatally shot unarmed black teen Michael Brown in August. The Justice Department also issued a report blasting the Ferguson police force for a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination against its majority-black populace.
Robinson's mother, Andrea Irwin, said her son had closely watched news coverage of the Ferguson shooting and last week's report.
"My son was so into watching everything that happened in Ferguson," a distraught Irwin told WISN-TV in Milwaukee. "He was one of the people that spoke out about this constantly. To turn around and have him die of the same things that he was so fearful of — it's not fair."
Robinson had his own legal history, recently starting three years on probation after pleading guilty in October to armed robbery. The police report indicates Robinson was one of at least three young men involved in a home invasion. "Some stolen property was recovered, as was a shotgun and a facsimile handgun," according to the report.
On Friday, officers responding to a call of a man wandering in and out of traffic followed the man to an apartment, Koval said. He said the officer heard what "sounded like a disturbance in the home" and forced entry. He said Robinson then assaulted the officer.
"The officer did draw his revolver and shot the suspect," Koval said, adding that the officer, Kenny, immediately began CPR.
"It's understandable that the reaction at the scene among some of our citizens was extremely volatile, emotional," Koval said Saturday. "That's absolutely appropriate under the circumstances. We would urge, obviously, that everybody exercise restraint and some calm and allow the Department of Criminal Investigation to conduct their investigation."
That investigation, independent of local police, is required for all police shootings under a 2014 state law.
