Wisconsin Investigative News Center
On August 25, a militiaman patrolling the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, claimed that the police at the scene told him that they planned to drive the demonstrators to the armed men—and then leave.
In a widely circulated video, two people were killed on that decisive night. Ryan Balch said he was in the “tactical advisor role” among armed citizens. He told the protesters: “Do you know what the police told us today? ? They are like,'We will be pushed down by you because you can deal with them, and then we will leave."
It is not yet clear to what extent such a plan has been implemented. The next day, Balch insisted in a long Facebook post that members of the militia "never agreed to this." By 11:45 in the evening, two protesters were shot and one third was injured by a teenager from Illinois. He responded to the call to take up arms to protect the city.
Balch made the same allegations in a video taken minutes before the shooting. Balch told Kristan T. Harris, a citizen journalist on the independent news and talk radio show The Rundown Live: "The police told us they will send them (the protesters) to us and then run away."
"I believe we only encountered a monster outside that night. The government," Balch wrote on Facebook. "It tried to instigate and create a situation where this would happen."
Harris broadcasted the protests live for several hours, and he said from his vantage point that the police did indeed seem to let the protesters approach the militia.
"Why are they sending them (the protesters) like this?" Harris said in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. "Of the 360 degrees, which degree did you choose in the throat of the militia? I think it's a police problem."
The Kenosha Police Department and Mayor John Antaramian’s office inquired about the alleged cooperation between the police and the militia did not receive a reply.
Balch was identified as a member of the militia claiming the video by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors and exposes hate groups and other extremists. On August 30, the organization published a story about Barch's immersion in extreme right extremism.
A federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Milwaukee on Tuesday cited the video and claimed that the Kenosha police and sheriff’s deputies had specifically arrested police brutality protesters who violated the county’s curfew - as early as 7 p.m. in certain evenings - At the same time, armed militias and militias who violated the county’s curfew regulations were ignored. The same curfew. The county lifted the curfew on Wednesday.
A lawyer representing the county issued a statement saying that the protesters’ lawsuit was groundless, but did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s questions.
On August 23, Kenosha white police officer Rusten Sheskey fired seven shots at the 29-year-old black man Jacob Blake in the back. Violence, fire, robbery and other incidents followed For property damage, Kenosha County promulgated this restriction.
Balch appeared in the video on August 25 with 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch, Illinois. He shot and killed two 26-year-old protesters from Silver Lake, Wisconsin; and Kenosha. The 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum (Joseph Rosenbaum). Rittenhouse was also accused of hurting 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz in West Allis, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse's legal team argued that his actions were in self-defense.
Before the shooting, a militia group called for the use of weapons to protect property "from evil mobs." One of the leaders of the Kenosha Guard is a former member of the Kenosha City Council.
In his Facebook post, Balch described patrolling and providing first aid with Rittenhouse, and occasionally clashed with "instigators"-he described these people as mingling with Black Lives Matter, militias, or others in the city The group has nothing to do with people. The text message sent to Balch on Tuesday was not answered, and his Facebook profile will no longer be publicly displayed on Thursday.
If the cooperation between Kenosha law enforcement agencies and armed citizens is true, it will be the latest example of officials encouraging such mobilizations across the country. Chuck Tanner, the research director of the Institute of Human Rights Research and Education, which is responsible for censoring racism, anti-Semitism, and far-right social movements, said his team has seen some cooperation between law enforcement agencies and armed civilians. An example.
"I don't think anyone knows the full scope of what is happening, but even the numbers we see are really disturbing," Tanner said. "It is impossible for law enforcement agencies to get close to these types of groups."
Reporters and researchers have documented similar tolerance or cooperation between police and militia in Albuquerque, Oregon, Curry County, and Hood County, Texas. In Wisconsin, the morning after the fatal shooting in Kenosha, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark Jr. said he would not condemn anyone who took up a weapon without police action.
"You can't let government officials and law enforcement officers tell people,'Don't take the law in your own hands,'" Clark said on the Mark Belling show at WISN-AM. "Well, you force them to do this!"
On Thursday, two members of the militia from Hartville, Missouri — Michael Carmo, 40, and Cody Smith, 33 — were charged with illegal possession of firearms. A whistleblower said they were pleasant in Wisconsin. A hotel in the grassland was arrested. , Planned to rob and possibly shoot people in Kenosha.
According to U.S. Attorneys in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, these people’s criminal records prohibit them from owning guns, and they were on a visit to Kenosha President Donald Trump on Tuesday. Agents seized an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a No. 12 shotgun, two pistols, a silencer, ammunition, body armor, a drone, and other materials.
"Carmo told (witnesses) that he was going to Kenosha for the possible use of guns against people," according to criminal proceedings. "(The witnesses) worry that as Karmo talks more and more about conspiracy theories and other'crazy' political conversations, his mentality is not suitable for owning guns."
According to Barch’s account on Facebook, he joined other armed civilians on August 25 to “protect citizens, their property and their livelihoods”. At some point that night, a Kenosha police officer approached and "telled us that they will push the protesters towards us because we can deal with them," he wrote.
Balch wrote that his team never agreed to the plan and “turned to a stance that protects the public, including BLM (black life is also fate), Antifa, and the general public.”
Balch also said that he witnessed a scene that was widely circulated on social media in which an unidentified officer threw a bottle at Rittenhouse in an armored vehicle marked "Sheriff" before firing. water. In the video, the police can be heard saying: "Hey, thank you again" and "We thank you, we really did this", while other police ordered nearby protesters to leave.
In the post, Balch described the offer of water as a mockery, accusing the police of earlier "poisoning" members of the militia who manage the rescue station.
Barch wrote: "KPD has consciously decided to abandon the people of Kenosha to those they think have a reason to use machines and weapons of war. And intends to anger them, drive them to our side, and let the chips fall as far as possible. place."
Former Kenosha Alder. Kenosha Guard militia leader Kevin Matthewson told Wisconsin Observatory in an email last week that although police chief Daniel Mieskinis and Kenosha County Sheriff David Bes publicly refused the help of armed citizens after the fatal shooting, But the police at the scene "welcomed us and thanked us all night."
In follow-up news, Matthewson said that he left the city center before dark, and it is not known whether law enforcement agencies are willing to rush the protesters to the militia.
The protesters also claimed unequal treatment in a federal lawsuit filed by lawyer Kimberley Motley on behalf of four people cited by the police for violating the county's curfew. Motley also represents Grosskreutz, who was injured in the August 25 shooting.
The lawsuit states, “In the past 9 days, the Kenosha City Police Department and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department arrested more than 150 peaceful protesters who violated the curfew imposed by the county, despite the fact that pro-police protesters and militiamen were not a pro-police The demonstrators were arrested.
"The Kenosha police and the Kenosha sheriff used this decree to silence the voices of those who peacefully demonstrate against police brutality, while allowing pro-police activists and militias to wander in the streets without worrying about being arrested."
The allegations that no pro-police protesters were arrested have not been independently confirmed.
One of the protesters arrested in the lawsuit, Kenosha native Adelana Akindes, told WPR that she spent 24 hours in jail without making a phone call.
"We do feel that we are being set an example," she said. "We left the street. This is a way of expression,'We don't want you to come back to them. We don't want you to come back there."
Samuel Hall Jr., a lawyer representing Kenosha County, called the lawsuit "completely unfounded" in a statement issued on Wednesday.
The statement said: “The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department has worked tirelessly to restore order to the community and carefully protect the rights of all citizens throughout the process.”
Law enforcement’s handling of Rittenhouse’s arrest has also led to accusations of different treatment of volunteer police officers and protesters.
After the police responded to the family dispute, when Siski left the police and tried to enter the vehicle, Black shot him in the back, and he was still paralyzed from the waist down.
Kenosha law enforcement allowed Rittenhouse to leave the scene after shooting three people and return to Illinois, where he was arrested the next day. Video after the shooting showed witnesses shouting to the police that Rittenhouse shot people, and the teenager raised his hands and walked past the police car.
"For him (Rittenhouse), he could even shoot and kill people, but still leave the scene-I mean they talked about finding a knife in the car, not even in Jacob Black's Body," Lieutenant Mandela Barnes said at a press conference last week. "This guy killed with a spear, (and) just walked freely, so he could return to his home in Illinois."
At a press conference last week, Sergeant Beth said he could not immediately explain why the police did not arrest Rittenhouse, describing the stress of radio traffic, people screaming and large armored vehicles idling nearby.
According to research by Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Balch has a history of social media amplifying racist messages, including the words of Adolf Hitler and white supremacist Richard Spencer.
Hayden said the prospect of police alliances with such armed militias is "obviously very dangerous."
"If there were police-and this did happen-they were exposed to the same extreme-right conspiracy spread, extreme-right propaganda, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, racist conspiracy theories, these militias would be even more dangerous-this did happen. The members are... This is a huge danger for people of color."
In a report released at the end of last month, former FBI agent Michael German documented the infiltration of white supremacist extremism into the ranks of some U.S. police and sheriff departments. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned that followers of this ideology constituted a "continuous threat of lethal violence."
Although "only a small number of law enforcement officials may be active members of white supremacist groups," Germany wrote in a report by the Brennan Judicial Center, the dangers of this affiliation "cannot be overemphasized." The center is located at New York University and is committed to reforming and defending justice and democracy.
Hayden said that Barch also supports the Bugaloo movement, and its members generally believe that the racial and political differences in the United States will trigger another civil war — or they hope such a conflict will occur.
The day after the shooting, Balch mentioned a possible civil war in his Facebook post-a civil war he didn't want to participate in.
Balch wrote: "I see people refer to it as the beginning of a'civil war' in certain communities." "I don't know this, but we need to unite under a common cause and stop letting them deceive us each other. After killing and destroying each other’s lives, I became more aware."
After SPLC conducted an investigation into his social media history, Barch later tried to distance himself from the Bugaloo movement in another post, saying that its propaganda of racism and Nazi ideology was "wrong" and "misguided." .
On Wednesday, Balch deleted his Facebook cover photo with an igloo — a symbol of the boogaloo movement. As of Thursday, the page is no longer visible.
Hayden said: “The danger is that these things have a way to really disrupt people’s brains and make them think about loyalty to their race, rather than loyalty to their neighbors, rather than loyalty to the country. It’s true, true, and true. Violence."
Jim Malewitz and Vanessa Swales of Wisconsin Watch and Keenan Chen of First Draft, an international non-profit organization focused on trust and truth in the digital age, contributed to this story. The non-profit Wisconsin Watch (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, published, or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Wisconsin-Madison or any of its affiliates.
The non-profit Wisconsin News Investigation Center (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, published or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Wisconsin-Madison or any of its affiliates.
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Author: Dee J. Hall / Wisconsin Watch, WisconsinWatch.org September 5, 2020
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Dee J. Hall, co-founder of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative News, joined the staff as an executive editor in June 2015. She is responsible for the daily news operations of the center. She worked for the Wisconsin Daily News for 24 years as an editor and reporter, focusing on projects and investigations.
Hall graduated from Indiana University School of Journalism in 1982 and has worked for the Lake County Star Weekly in Crown Point, Indiana, Gary (Indiana) Post Tribune, Louisville (Kentucky) Times, and St. Petersburg (Florida) Report intern. .) Times. Before returning to her hometown of Madison in 1990, she worked as a reporter for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix for eight years, covering city government, schools, and the environment. In her 35-year journalism career, Hol has won more than three dozen local, state, and national awards for her work, including a 2001 National Journal survey that exposed Wisconsin’s top legislative leadership A secret campaign machine operated by humans at $4 million per year.
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