The latest on Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers told CNN that the time former Vice President Joe Biden spent in Kenosha was “night and day” when compared to President Trump’s visit. 

Later in the interview, Evers said the people he spoke with need healing. 

“I don’t think candidate Trump coming to Kenosha and talking about the shooting of Jacob Blake as …choking on a three-foot putt compares to what happened here with Joe Biden and his ability to show empathy to understand the issues going forward. To me, it was night and day,” the governor said.

Watch:

Attorney Patrick Salvi told CNN that Jacob Blake and his family discussed the need for de-escalation training in police work, as well as the need for increased use of body worn cameras for police officers during their meeting with Joe Biden today.

Fellow Blake family attorney, B’Ivory LaMarr, said while Jacob Blake was able to join the meeting on the phone from his hospital bed, he is “still in a great degree of pain, he did describe that.”

Jacob Blake’s uncle Justin Blake told CNN Thursday that Blake’s family has spoken with former vice president Joe Biden about the desire for better policies regarding social justice in America.

Blake said they want police shootings involving African Americans to be dealt with at the federal level and “we want equities and inequities to be resolved within these African American communities nationwide.”

At a community event in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Biden advocated for an examination of how prosecutors handle criminal convictions and discussed education disparities in poor communities. The Democratic presidential nominee also promised that if elected, he would establish a national policing commission out of the White House.

Jacob Blake’s family attorney Ben Crump released a statement on Thursday about former vice president Joe Biden and Jill Biden’s visit with Jacob Blake’s family. 

In the statement, Crump said the Bidens today “had a very engaging 90-minute in-person meeting with the Blake family, including Jacob’s father, sisters and brother,” 

“I joined the meeting by phone, as did Jacob’s mother and Jacob himself from his hospital bed. The family was grateful for the meeting and was very impressed that the Bidens were so engaged and willing to really listen,” read the statement. 

“Jacob Jr. shared about the pain he is enduring,” and the former vice president “commiserated,” according to the statement.  

Former vice president Joe Biden promised that if elected president, he would start a national commission on policing out of the White House that would bring civil rights activists and police chiefs together.

The Democratic presidential nominee said a significant portion of police officials are “decent people,” but there are a lot of “bad folks” in every organization.

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At a gathering of community leaders in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Joe Biden spoke about the impression left on him after speaking with Jacob Blake and his family today in Milwaukee.

Biden said he specifically spoke with Blake who “talked about how nothing was going to defeat him, how whether he walked again or not, he was not going to give up,” he said. Biden said both men spoke on the phone for about 15 minutes.

The Democratic nominee also noted that he spoke about faith with Blake, specifically quoting, “He will raise you up on eagle’s wings, Bear you on the breath of dawn, Make you to shine like the sun, And hold you in the palm of His Hand.” 

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Joe Biden addressed a crowd of business and community leaders in Kenosha this afternoon where he discussed trouble in America’s legal system and ongoing racial issues.

Biden advocated for an examination of how prosecutors handle criminal convictions.

The former vice president also discussed education disparities in poor communities.

“There’s so much we can do,” Biden said. “We can do it by just eliminating the tax cut for the top one tenth of 1%.”

Biden said he is optimistic that there is an opportunity for change in this country “if we seize it.”

“We’ve reached an inflection point in American history. I honest to God believe we have an enormous opportunity now that the screen, the curtain has been pulled back on just what’s going on in the country, to do a lot of really positive things,” Biden said.

Watch: Joe Biden discusses prison reform in Kenosha

The Biden campaign provided a list of community members Joe Biden is speaking with at Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin, today.

The list includes members of the faith community, law enforcement officials, activists and small business owners, among others.

 Here’s the list:

Joe and Jill Biden have just arrived at Kenosha’s Grace Lutheran Church and a group of Black Lives Matter protestors have gathered on the road in front of it shouting, “Shut it down!”  

The protesters are also alternating between shouting Jacob Blake’s name and “Black Lives Matter.” This is their second pass through the street. 

A pair of police cars from the Kenosha Police Department are following the protestors and using a megaphone to say things like, “This is an unlawful assembly. Please move out of the roadway. Exit the roadway.”

There have been 252 arrests in Kenosha since Aug. 23, the day Jacob Blake was shot by police, according to a Kenosha County Sheriff Department situational update.  

Of the 252 arrests, 132 have been individuals who did not live in Kenosha County, said the sheriff’s department update.  

Still, there has been more than $2 million in damage to city and county property reported since Aug. 23 — including $385,000 worth of damage to Kenosha County property and $1.95 million worth of damage reported to city property, according to the update.  

More than 40 law enforcement agencies are assisting with the civil unrest in the area, said the update.   

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating at least 23 “fires of interest,” according to the update.  

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is meeting now with the Blake family privately at the Milwaukee airport, according to the pool report.

Here’s a list of attendees, according to the campaign via pool:

Democratic nominee Joe Biden is in Wisconsin today, and is planning to hold a community event in Kenosha and then meet with the family of Jacob Blake.

Biden’s trip comes two days after President Trump visited Wisconsin. Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, have also spoken with Blake’s family. Trump has not.

For Biden, the trip is a return of sorts to travel to the most important 2020 swing states — which his campaign has strictly limited since mid-March during the coronavirus pandemic. He also delivered a speech Monday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, another crucial state in November’s general election.

Biden told reporters Wednesday he has received “overwhelming requests” from Democratic leaders that he travel to Wisconsin.

The shooting of Blake — which left him paralyzed from the waist down, his family says — has moved police brutality, racial injustice and the looting and property damage that have followed some protests to the forefront in one of the nation’s most important swing states in November’s general election.

President Trump visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, going against the wishes of officials requesting he stay away from the city, which is still coping from the recent shooting of a Black man by law enforcement and subsequent demonstrations that have turned deadly.

The President did not meet with the family of Jacob Blake, the man who was shot in the back seven times by a police officer. Trump claimed that he’s not meeting with Blake’s family during his Wisconsin visit because they wanted to involve lawyers. The pastors of Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, took part in one event.

During the trip, Trump was asked by a reporter whether he thinks systemic racism is a problem in the United States, given that there are also peaceful protests around the country calling for an end to it. The President responded: “Well, you know you just keep getting back to the opposite subject. We should talk about the kind of violence we’ve seen in Portland and here and other places.”

“The fact is that we’ve seen tremendous violence and we will put it out very, very quickly if given the chance,” he continued.

Trump also largely sided with the message he’s held onto since demonstrations spread across the country this summer, arguing that police violence is not a systemic issue and saying that the people of Kenosha want “law and order” and “want the police to be police.”

Trump’s visit to the swing state marked another attempt to continue his campaign of linking Democrat-run cities and states to violence ahead of the November election in an attempt to paint himself as voters’ candidate for law and order.

His visit included surveying areas of the city damaged by demonstrations, touring an emergency operations center and a high school, and then holding a public safety roundtable.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Jacob Blake as unarmed. Blake had a knife.

More than a week after Jacob Blake was shot, his family said his life is no longer in danger — but still so few of their questions have been answered.

“He’s slowly but surely able to talk a little better, able to stay up a little longer, hold the hand of his father,” Justin Black, his uncle, told CNN’s John Berman on Tuesday. But even when Blake does talk, he added, he can’t seem to get past questions around the incident that put him in the hospital.

President Trump visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday but he did not meet with the Blake family and members said they don’t feel enough has been done. They are calling for the conviction of the police officer involved in the shooting of Blake.

“If we’re not talking about laws of reform — immediately reforming some of these police — then really I don’t want to speak to you at all,” Blake’s father, Jacob Blake, Sr., told CNN’s Don Lemon Tuesday. “But if you’re talking about some reform, you can sit down with me. We can have some coffee or tea.”

Blake’s family said he posed no threat to officers, and they don’t think there will be justice until there is a conviction of the officer, who was placed on administrative leave.

His uncle said Blake asked the other night why officers shot him so many times.

The Kenosha Professional Police Association alleges Blake fought with officers trying to arrest him, put one officer in a headlock and carried a knife he refused to drop when ordered to do so.

Raysean White, who recorded video of Blake being shot, has said he didn’t see Blake holding a knife or harming officers, but he saw only part of the incident.

An attorney for the family, Patrick Salvi Jr., took issue with Trump’s description of the officers as golfers who choke and miss a put and the incident as a “kill or be killed” situation.

The officers had minutes, not seconds, to make decisions, he said. And video shows the officers were not in danger from Blake.

“At no point in time was Jacob’s momentum towards the officers. And what you see is that the officer is pulling on his shirt and then fires those seven bullets into Jacob’s back. If he was concerned that Jacob had a knife, why wouldn’t he back away?”

Blake appears to have told officers that he had a knife in his possession, the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation has said. Investigators later “recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard” of Blake’s vehicle and no other weapons were found, the agency said.

Two videos have been released showing the encounter between Blake and police, but another attorney for the family, Ben Crump, said another video will clear up misconceptions and show that Blake was trying to get away from officers.

Attorney General William Barr, in an exclusive interview on CNN, broadly defended the actions of police, saying shootings of Black Americans often weren’t racially motivated and weren’t as common as public demonstrations have made them seem.

Barr acknowledged, however, that at times it created different situations for Black and White Americans.

“I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently. But I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said.

“Didn’t Jesse Jackson say that when he looks behind him and he sees a group of young Black males walking behind him, he’s more scared than when he sees a group of White youths walking behind him,” Barr added. “Does that make him a racist?”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. said later Wednesday that Barr had taken his comments out of context.

Jackson told CNN that back in the 1990s, his family lived in a “drug-infested neighborhood,” where “a family member’s son was killed right in front of my house, killed right in front of my wife, a drug thing.”

Jackson said that he had been talking about “the young man” who killed his relative. “If he comes behind me, I would be afraid,” Jackson said.

“Now what Mr. Barr said is the opposite about what I meant about crime,” he said. “Those shot in Wisconsin, the killings in Ferguson and the killing in Atlanta, Breonna (Taylor) and George Floyd, all of those were police killings that had nothing to do with who was coming down the street.”

“I would love to have a conversation with William Barr,” Jackson added.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will visit Kenosha today, the Wisconsin city where the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake reignited protests over racial injustice, his campaign said.

Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, “will hold a community meeting in Kenosha to bring together Americans to heal and address the challenges we face,” his campaign said Wednesday.

Biden also will meet with Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., and other Blake family members during the visit, according to a family spokesperson and campaign official.

The trip comes two days after President Trump visited Kenosha, ignoring the objections of local leaders, including Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who said in a letter to Trump that he was “concerned your presence will only hinder our healing.”

Biden told reporters Wednesday that he has received “overwhelming requests” from Democratic leaders that he travel to Wisconsin.

“What we want to do is — we’ve got to heal. We’ve got to put things together. Bring people together,” Biden said.

The shooting of Blake — which left him paralyzed from the waist down, his family says — has moved police brutality, racial injustice and the looting and property damage that have followed some protests to the forefront in one of the nation’s most important swing states in November’s general election.