Good afternoon. You’ll notice that there’s a theme here and that there’s concern for the public. For those that have been injured by the Kenosha police department, those injured by civilians and the injuries inflicted upon the community itself by arsonists, Molotov cocktails, looting, all of the violence that goes on. So I want to be very clear with that. Everybody that stands before you is very committed to bringing the peaceful resolution to the issue at hand. We understand there are underlying issues that are driving this. We’re not going to fix them overnight, but the commitment is here from the leaders here to do something about it. So with that there’s a clear understanding that Kenosha is full of good people. Kenosha is not a community of violent people. The residents here are sad, they’re scared, they’re confused, but they’re not violent. Peaceful protests are welcome.
It is a way, it has always been a way for the American public to speak their mind. We support that, I support that as an individual. We cannot support violence. When the line crosses from stating one’s opinions to taking violent actions and hurting people, damaging property and generally unruly behavior that must stop it. Not only is it bad for the community, it detracts from the message. The message here, the underlying message is about racial tension and police violence. Whether or not that’s a contributing factor, whether it’s here in Kenosha and across the nation, those are issues that need to be worked on and addressed. When things become violent that message is lost. It becomes all about violence. And that’s clearly not what Kenosha is about. The people here are good people and we’re here to protect them. We’ve called in necessary resources to do that.
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So over the last few days, Kenosha has also experienced, unfortunately, looting, arson, Molotov cocktails, violence, persons injured. In addition, last night, in a situation that began peaceful and turned somewhat unruly, and the sheriffs spoke about things that were thrown, hammers, bricks, violence toward law enforcement and toward the National Guard who assisting a controlling the scene here and protecting those who were rightfully speaking their mind. Persons who were out after the curfew became engaged in some type of disturbance and persons were shot.
Everybody involved was out after the curfew. I’m not going to make a great deal of that. But the point is the curfew’s in place to protect. Had persons not been out involved in violation of that, perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened. So last night, a 17 year old individual from Antioch, Illinois, was involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place. The result of it was two people are dead. This is not a police action. This is not the action I believe that those who set out to do protests, it is the persons who were involved after the legal time, involved in illegal activity that brought violence to this community. So last night, unfortunately, a 26 year old Silver Lake resident and a 36 year old Kenosha resident lost their lives to the senseless violence.