Prosecutors originally charged Kyle Rittenhouse with seven criminal offenses for his actions surrounding the deaths of two men and the wounding of another on the night of Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. But after the prosecution rested its case, the defense successfully moved to have one of the charges dismissed, arguing that the prosecution failed to meet the basic requirements of the charge.
The judge ruled that even though police had announced an 8 p.m. curfew, they had failed to impose that curfew, instead letting rioters run wild. Rittenhouse could hardly be found guilty of failing to obey a police order that the police themselves were not even trying to enforce.
If only the police had been permitted to enforce that curfew, two men would be alive today and a third would not have been shot in the arm.
The first man shot by Rittenhouse that night, Joseph Rosenbaum, had been released from a Milwaukee hospital that morning, where he had been recovering from his second suicide attempt in as many months. Rosenbaum, who was homeless, had tried to stay with his girlfriend in Kenosha that night, but she had obtained a no-contact order against him resulting from domestic violence.
Left wandering the streets amid a third day of rioting, Rosenbaum was swept up in a mob of protesters chasing Rittenhouse toward a car dealership. The jury will soon decide whether Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense when he shot Rosenbaum, but everyone agrees that had there been no riot, the two would never have met.
The second man shot that night, Anthony Huber, was a violent repeat offender who had been sent to prison on multiple occasions for strangling and kicking his siblings. Huber had rioted on the first night of protests and was back for more action when fellow rioters screamed, “Get his ass,” and pointed at Rittenhouse. Huber chased Rittenhouse down the street, and when Rittenhouse stumbled, Huber hit him with his skateboard. That’s when Rittenhouse shot him.
The third man shot by Rittenhouse, Gaige Grosskreutz, was a member of a group called the People’s Revolution. He had attended hundreds of protests across the nation. He regularly carried a pistol to protests, and he pointed that pistol at Rittenhouse, who shot first.
Everyone who says that Rittenhouse did not belong in Kenosha that night is correct. But the full truth is that none of these men should have been there.
Jacob Blake, the black man whose shooting by police sparked the rioting, is a convicted domestic abuser. Police were called by the woman who accused him of sexual assault because Blake was at her home, violating a court order to stay away from her. When police tried to lawfully arrest Blake for felony sexual assault, he went for a knife. This is why the shooting of Blake was ruled “reasonable and justified.”
It is always unfortunate when police have to use force to make a lawful arrest. And far too many people are shot by police every year, the vast majority of them white. But this does not give anyone license to raze and burn a city.
Far too many media outlets either ignored or outright endorsed the violent lawlessness in our nation’s streets in 2020. The 2020 riots caused over $1 billion in property damage, and hundreds of people were injured, including a 70-year-old Kenosha man beaten by rioters while defending a mattress store that was eventually burned to the ground.
The leftist media cannot give license to rioters to maim and destroy as they please and then act outraged when people try to defend themselves. If the media had roundly condemned the rioters on day one, maybe the police would have been in a better position to enforce their curfew by night three — and the Rittenhouse shootings would have never happened.
