Dontre Hamilton shooting: officer Christopher Manney will not be charged over death of mentally ill black man
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Version 0 of 1. A white former Milwaukee police officer who killed a mentally ill black man after shooting him 14 times and being fired by his commanding officer, will not face criminal charges. Officials said on Monday they believed the officer had acted in self-defence. In a statement, prosecutors said that while the incident in which former officer Christopher Manney fatally shot Dontre Hamilton amounted to a tragedy, the policeman’s actions were justified. “This was a tragic incident for the Hamilton family and for the community,” the local senior prosecutor, John Chisholm, said in a statement, according to the Associated Press. “But, based on all the evidence and analysis presented in this report, I come to the conclusion that Mr Manney’s use of force in this incident was justified self-defence and that defence cannot be reasonably overcome to establish a basis to charge the officer with a crime.” The announcement by officials in the state of Wisconsin followed an inquiry into the circumstance surrounding the shooting of Mr Hamilton in April. Reports said the officer had responded to a dispatch call to check on the well-being of a man sleeping in Milwaukee’s Red Arrow Park. After Mr Hamilton allegedly resisted efforts by the officer to frisk him, the two men started exchanging punches. The officer said Mr Hamilton then grabbed his baton and hit him on the neck with it. It was at that point that Mr Manney took out his weapon and shot Mr Hamilton. In the aftermath of the shooting, Mr Manney was condemned by his commanding officer, Police Chief Edward Flynn, who fired him. He said he had treated Mr Hamilton as a criminal rather than as someone suffering from mental health issues and he had instigated the encounter with an inappropriate frisking. “You don’t go hands-on and start frisking somebody only because they appear to be mentally ill,” he said at the time of the dismissal, which was condemned by the Milwaukee Police Association. Mr Manney is at least the third white police officer in the US this year not to be charged after a confrontation that led to a black man’s death. Yet while the death of Mr Hamilton preceded the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, the case did not attract as much national or international attention. The deaths of Mr Garner and Mr Brown sparked national protests and led to widespread criticism of the way some police officers deal with black suspects. On Saturday, two police officers were shot dead in New York by a man who suggested he was acting to revenge the deaths of Mr Garner and Mr Brown. Mr Hamilton’s family, who said the 31-year-old was suffering from schizophrenia and had recently stopped taking his medication, have tried to use the incident to raise awareness about mental health issues. Yet they have also said they believe the officer should face murder charges. Mr Manney, meanwhile, has appealed against the decision to fire him. He has said the incident that led to the death of Mr Hamilton had made it impossible for him to sleep and that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In the aftermath of Monday’s announcement, a small number of protesters gathered in Red Arrow Park, the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reported. Among them was Marty Horning who carried a handwritten sign that read “Shame”. “I'm tired of coming down here and marching,” he told the newspaper. “It appears that it’s always justified.” |