Officers Vincent Arenas and Brittany Meronek will resume work January 20 after being placed on administrative leave on August 23, 2020, the release said.
Officers Arenas and Meronek were not charged with a felony and upon investigation by the Kenosha County District Attorney and an independent investigator, former Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, the officers’ actions were reasonable and justified, ”the release said.
Resting Sheskey, the officer who shot Blake seven times, is still on administrative leave “pending the findings of Kenosha police’s use of deadly force,” the release read.
The decision not to charge Sheskey, followed by the decision to put the other two officers back to work, was born out of anger over the repeated deaths of black people at the hands of the police.
DA says Blake was armed with a knife
Sheskey, a white officer, shot Blake, a 29-year-old black man, seven times while responding to a domestic incident on August 23, 2020. Blake survived the shooting but was paralyzed from the waist down.
Sheskey told investigators that he used lethal force during the chaotic encounter because he was concerned that, while trying to flee, Blake was trying to kidnap a child in the backseat of the vehicle.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice had said that Blake had a knife in his possession and the gun was found on the floor of his vehicle. Blake himself told authorities he owned a knife, Graveley said.
A lawyer from Blake’s family disputed that Blake was a threat.
“It makes no sense in the video articulatable for an officer to say that he suffered damage at that particular moment. I think that’s completely bogus and I think that’s just a rationalization to try to show what essentially a willful act, ”attorney B’Ivory LaMarr said after Graveley announced his decision.
‘It’s not against the law to have a knife, people have knives for different reasons. Jacob Blake is familiar with having a knife. ‘
CNN’s Ray Sanchez and Brad Parks contributed to this report.