MADISON, Wis.
(AP) -- Within hours of a white officer shooting an unarmed black man,
the police chief of Wisconsin's capital city was praying with the man's
grandmother, hoping to strike a conciliatory tone and avoid the riots
that last year rocked Ferguson, Missouri.
Chief
Mike Koval said he knows Madison is being watched across the nation
since 19-year-old Tony Robinson's death Friday evening, and he has gone
out of his way to avoid what he once called Ferguson's "missteps."
"Folks
are angry, resentful, mistrustful, disappointed, shocked, chagrined. I
get that," Koval said Saturday.
"People need to tell me squarely how
upset they are with the Madison Police Department."
The contrasts with Ferguson are many.
While
Ferguson police initially gave little information about the shooting of
Michael Brown, an 18-year-old, unarmed black man, Koval rushed to the
home of Robinson's mother. She didn't want to meet with him, he said,
but he talked and prayed with Robinson's grandmother in the driveway for
45 minutes.
It took a week for Ferguson to
release the name of the officer who shot Brown. Koval announced the name
of the officer involved in Madison, Matt Kenny, the day after the
shooting. He volunteered to reporters that the officer had been in a
previous fatal shooting in 2007, and that he had been cleared of
wrongdoing.
On the day that Ferguson police
named the officer who shot Brown, they also released video showing what
they said was Brown robbing a store. When Koval was asked about
Robinson's past criminal record Saturday, he declined to comment, saying
it would be inappropriate to do so a day after the man died.
"We
have a police chief who genuinely feels for a family's loss. It should
be abundantly clear to anyone following this incident that Madison,
Wisconsin, is not Ferguson, Missouri," said Jim Palmer, executive
director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the state's
largest police union.
But the chief's measured
approach hasn't impressed some demonstrators. Koval angered some of
them earlier this year with a blog post demanding they stop blaming
police for their problems.
"There are no
apologies that can repair the loss or deal with the loss of (Robinson),"
said Brandi Grayson, an organizer with Young, Gifted and Black, a
Madison group that has demonstrated against what it says is mistreatment
of blacks by the justice system. "This was bound to happen. There's
nothing the chief can say short of changing the system."
No
one answered the door at Robinson's mother's home on Sunday. A reporter
left a note in the door asking her to contact The Associated Press but
she had not done so as of late Sunday afternoon.
Robinson
died Friday night after Kenny shot him in an apartment during a
confrontation. Kenny had responded to a call of a man jumping in and out
of traffic. Kenny forced his way into the apartment after hearing what
Koval described as a "disturbance."
The state
Justice Department's Division of Criminal Investigation has taken over
the investigation under a new state law passed last year that requires
an outside agency to lead probes of officer-involved shootings. DOJ
spokeswoman Anne Schwartz declined to comment on Sunday.
The
shooting comes against a backdrop of multiple instances of white police
officers killing unarmed black men around the country over the last
year. The highest-profile incident was the death of Brown in Ferguson
last August.
Days of violence ensued, marked
by looting, fires, police firing tear gas into a crowd and officers
pointing weapons at demonstrators. Another round of riots broke out in
November after a grand jury chose not to indict the officer who shot
Brown, Darren Wilson. Last week the U.S. Justice Department declined to
charge Wilson with civil rights violations but issued a scathing report
accusing the Ferguson police department of racism and using policing to
fund the city's budget.
Koval, who is white,
took over as Madison's chief in April, replacing retiring black Chief
Noble Wray. In September he told the Wisconsin State Journal he believed
his department could deal with a racially charged shooting better than
Ferguson, saying his agency is more diverse and more invested in the
community than Ferguson's "rent-a-cops."
"I
see in Ferguson a series of missteps and miscues where they're always
reacting and, in fact, over-reacting to every set of facts that is
thrown in their midst, frankly," Koval said in the interview.
Two
months ago, Koval wrote a blog post criticizing Young, Black and Gifted
for blaming his officers for "everything from male pattern baldness to
global warming." The entry came in response to the group staging
protests over officer-involved deaths during rush-hour traffic,
demanding jail officials release 350 black inmates and imploring police
to stay out of black neighborhoods.
Koval
tried to be diplomatic when asked about the post on Saturday, saying he
and the group have agreed to disagree on policing black neighborhoods.
Grayson said Koval has had plenty of time to prepare for a racially charged shooting after watching what unfolded in Ferguson.
"He had a perfect response - perfect for white people," she said.
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