The mayor of Kenosha, Wisconsin, said his city did not have enough law enforcement officers to quash the riots that resulted in the death of two demonstrators this week.
Mayor John Antaramian, a Democrat, told CNN on Friday that Gov. Tony Evers, also a Democrat, agreed to send in a large National Guard presence, but he said the city did not initially have enough officials to stop the swarm of out-of-town protesters that arrived in the city of roughly 100,000 residents.
“The problem in the city at the time was we had made requests to the state, and the state did bring the National Guard in. However, a huge number of outside individuals came into the city, including, as you saw, the militia. These are not folks that are from Kenosha. They all came from other places. I shouldn’t say all, but a good percentage came from other places,” Antaramian said.
“Because of that, we were basically in a situation that in the first two nights [was] a difficult situation to deal with. We had all sorts of different groups that came into the community to help the police department. That’s police officers, sheriffs from all over the state came to help out. National Guard came. However, we just, we did not have enough people in the first two nights,” he said.
Evers had refused Trump’s push to send in National Guard troops earlier in the week, according to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The governor reversed his decision and said 500 National Guard troops would be deployed to support local law enforcement on Wednesday after two protesters died in a shooting that also injured a third person. Antaramian said the influx of National Guard members has helped the city regain control.
“We have been able to get more support from the National Guard, which has made things a lot easier for us,” Antaramian said.
Protests in Kenosha began on Sunday after video of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man, went viral. The demonstrations quickly got violent, leading to looting and vandalism, and on Tuesday, the shooting that killed two people occurred. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Illinois, has been arrested and charged in connection with the shooting.