Sister of Samuel Sharpe Jr. Demands Justice After Police Killing During RNC

As anger grows in Milwaukee over the police killing of 43-year-old Samuel Sharpe during the Republican National Convention, we speak with his sister, Angelique Sharpe, who says the family is fighting for transparency from the authorities and the full video of the fatal incident. “We really want justice for my brother,” says Angelique, who also explains that her brother’s life had been threatened by a “bully” and that he had actually called the police for help before he was killed. Samuel Sharpe was an unhoused Black man shot 27 times by police on Tuesday — but the officers were from Ohio, part of a deployment of thousands of outside law enforcement members in Wisconsin for the RNC. We are also joined by Wisconsin state Representative Darrin Madison, a Democratic Socialist, who says both Sharpe’s death and the killing of D’Vontaye Mitchell by hotel security guards weeks earlier point to a larger problem of anti-Black violence in Milwaukee.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” We’re broadcasting from Milwaukee just after the last night of the Republican National Convention. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Here in Milwaukee, protesters marched on Thursday through downtown to call for justice for Samuel Sharpe and D’Vontaye Mitchell. Samuel Sharpe was a 43-year-old unhoused Black man who was shot dead in Milwaukee by police officers from Ohio who were here in Wisconsin as part of a group of 4,500 law enforcement officials here for the RNC. The shooting took place a mile from the RNC’s proceedings. Sharpe’s death came weeks after security guards at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Milwaukee killed D’Vontaye Mitchell. The 43-year-old Black father died after security guards pinned him to the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! was at the protest and march on Thursday. This is Katrina Games, the aunt of Sam Sharpe. But first, we hear from Nayisha Mitchell, the big sister of D’Vontaye Mitchell.

NAYISHA MITCHELL: My name is Nayisha Mitchell. D’Vontaye was my brother. I was his big sister. We are definitely going to keep fighting for justice here. We appreciate all you guys’ support. We just ask for the community to keep on coming out here with us, keep standing with us, until we get some answers.

You know, no one has been charged. No one has been arrested. They’re saying that they’re waiting on autopsy results. But we saw the video. We all saw the video. Why do we need autopsy results to determine if these people need to be arrested or convicted of a crime? We saw them murder him in broad daylight. We need answers, and we want it now. And we need justice now.

KATRINA GAMES: My name is Katrina Games. I am here on behalf of my nephew, for his mother’s sake. Now, most people that know Sam Sharpe, they know that he has MS, and he doesn’t — his gait is unbalanced. He wanted to be on his own with his MS. He didn’t want us to feel like we had to take care of him or burden him. He told us all that God told him to go and help in that community. And that’s what he did.

But for the police to just shoot him like that, 27 bullets, come on. And you shot my nephew like that. You shot him! It didn’t take all of that. If he was someone else, if he was a different race — and I hate to bring race in this, because I have all races in my family — but you wouldn’t have killed him like that, you wouldn’t have shot him like that. Twenty-seven bullets. And all that he was doing was trying protect himself. He went to the police, and they did nothing. And now my nephew is shot. He is shot, and he is dead, and it is just horrible.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests here in Milwaukee. Angelique Sharpe is the sister of Sam Sharpe Jr., shot 27 times by Columbus, Ohio, police officers near the Republican National Convention, about a mile away, on Tuesday. And we’re joined by Wisconsin state Representative Darrin Madison, whose district includes Milwaukee. He’s a member of Democratic Socialists of America.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Angelique, I met you yesterday at the rally that ended at the Hyatt. You were in Red Arrow Park. And first, my condolences on the death of your brother.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: You are very brave to come here today —

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — because you just lost him. Can you tell us what happened to Sam? I mean, the fact that officers from Columbus, Ohio, who were coming to the RNC to be part of the thousands of police officers here for this national security event, opened fire on your brother? Explain.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Thank you for your condolences.

First and foremost, the situation, from our perspective, is that Sam, he had actually complained about a bully that lived in the shelterless community down there. He actually called on Saturday. The police have not contacted our family, asked for any, not a question. Our phone logs —

AMY GOODMAN: Just to be clear, you’re saying that your brother Sam called the police for help?

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: At least that’s what we — we’re under the understanding that he called the police for help. And he called home, and he came home that day, as well. He called home Saturday. And I called him, and he had told my mother that he feared for his life. Someone told him that they were going to kill him, his dog and burn his tent down. He was afraid. And my mother was hysterical. She said, “Angelique” — she called me. She said, “Angelique, call Sam.”

I called Sam. He answered the phone. He repeated this to me and said, “Angelique” — you know, I was like, “Well, what do you want me to do?” He was like, “Well, I really don’t want you involved, you know, down here, because you don’t know anything about this community.”

AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about the kind of — the unhoused encampment —

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: — where he had moved out of the house to live.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Absolutely. Like, I would go visit him and, you know, give him money or ask him was he OK, or batteries or whatever that he might need. But I didn’t, like, hang out down there or anything like that. And so, he didn’t want me to just be immersed in the community like that. So, he was like — he basically said that, you know, if this person tries to come for him, he’s going to have to protect himself, and not to go down there. Then, that was Saturday.

Tuesday, the day that this happened, he came home at about 5:30, 6:00 in the morning. He said that whoever this was chased him out of the encampment to the house. So he left his dog Isis down there. And he complained again to my mother that this person was trying to make good on what they were trying to — what they said. They was going to try to — you know, premeditated murder. And so, ultimately, they got into a standoff. And what we’re seeing in the video, the bodycam, is a video without context. So —

AMY GOODMAN: Meaning you’re seeing Sam with what in his hands?

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: So, he has — he does have, like — we believe that they were paring knives, that he was, like, opening — like, most, a lot of the shelterless community may not have regular appliances and tools that you have in a kitchen. They will open cans and eat out of whatever. And so, maybe he had already had this, you know, around or —

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re saying it was to protect himself. He also had MS?

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: He had MS, which affected his balance, his hearing. And this person knew this, that Sam wasn’t — everybody down there knew Sam was not physically stealth to stand.

AMY GOODMAN: Even the local police knew him.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They knew.

AMY GOODMAN: But they were local police.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They were local police.

AMY GOODMAN: And these were police from Ohio who had come in to supposedly provide security for the convention.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They don’t have any clue about that community at all.

AMY GOODMAN: So, they opened fire.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They opened fire. And —

AMY GOODMAN: They were far from him.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They were far from him. And so, a couple of things had come into play that really is — you know, have us baffled. One, Sam has MS. That affects your hearing. Two, nobody’s talking about this happened on 7th — 15th — about 15th and Vliet. Onto 16th Street is one of the most busy thoroughfare streets in the city. The traffic — this is high noon. We’re talking about noontime, lunchtime traffic in the middle of a workday, loud vehicles. So, on top of him not being able to hear and traffic, how are you supposed to hear police from that far away telling you — to give any commands? And not only that, in the video, it backs it up, because neither one of the men responded to the — they couldn’t hear. Otherwise, there’s no way that both of them didn’t turn around and respond. They’re both.

And I also — I want to debunk the narrative that this person’s life was in danger. I’ve never seen a person come to a, quote-unquote, “knife fight,” that’s in danger, that’s engaging with, quote-unquote, “the perpetrator.” Why aren’t you running? Why aren’t you — if you’re in imminent danger, you’re scared for your life. There’s no way that 25 or 30 police officers, or however many it is, put that many brains together and talked about he had a knife, and that’s the only conclusion you came up with, was to go down there and shoot him and kill him dead like that.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Representative Darrin Madison, if you could respond to this tragic incident and the fact that Black people in Wisconsin are nearly six times more likely to be killed by police than white people? If you could just say what specific measures you’re advocating?

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one, I want to uplift that community over there. There’s Repairers of the Breach in that neighborhood, which is a 24-hour-a-day shelter that provides services for folks who are unhoused in that community, which — that’s why that encampment is there, and that’s why local law enforcement know a lot of the folks in the community and know how to navigate those relationships.

As it relates to the broader context of our local communities, you know, we — Black folks in this city have navigated police violence since the 1950s. That was one of the first killings of a Black male by the hands of law enforcement reported in our state. And that has only happened more and more times throughout history. In recent years, that’s happened a series of times, which has led to communities crying for real change as it relates to law enforcement procedures and practices to ensure that folks can be safe in their own community.

Some of the bills that, you know, I’ve been working on over the past year have called for, one, police decertification for law enforcement when law enforcement officers are involved in these situations and they are found guilty. What often happens is, instead of being held accountable, a law enforcement officer will quit and then go work in another department in another community nearby, right?

AMY GOODMAN: And you have, in the case of D’Vontaye Mitchell — and let’s just be clear, Sam was killed on Tuesday.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: D’Vontaye was killed — oh, it was June 30th. That was a few weeks ago. And he was held down not by police, but by security guards.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: By security.

AMY GOODMAN: And I have to say, yesterday, when we went to the Hyatt and I went to the different police to say, “Can you tell me where exactly D’Vontaye Mitchell was killed?” they would say, “Uh, uh, uh, I don’t know. You know, I am from Chicago,” or “I am from” — and they named all these different places — “Ohio,” “I am from” — because they were all different law enforcement. And, of course, the local police, they also wouldn’t tell me.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: But these weren’t even police. They were security guards. That he was held down?

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain. And then talk about what you’re demanding, what police have responded in both cases.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah. So, in the case of D’Vontaye, what had happened was there was a — you know, the staff claimed that there was — he was being disruptive in the —

AMY GOODMAN: In the Hyatt.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: In the Hyatt. It eventually led to them assaulting him in the space. Apparently, he ended up in a bathroom at some — a women’s bathroom at some point, and then was chased outside, in which he was pinned down on the ground by at least two confirmed security guards. The other two folks, it wasn’t confirmed if they were security or they were Hyatt staff.

What we do know is that the Hyatt has fired that security team, as well as a few other staffers who worked in the space, for not being compliant with their own policies. What that tells us — and, you know, the lawyer of D’Vontaye’s family said it best — is that there is skepticism, at least from the Hyatt’s perspective, in that whole altercation.

When Milwaukee law enforcement arrives, they tried to — they found him unresponsive and tried to resuscitate him, and he, sadly, lost his life. One of his — what we know was his last words was “I’m sorry.” And often in these situations where folks are losing their life, they are pleading, with someone who has dominance, for their life. And they don’t respond and do anything. And that hurts.

AMY GOODMAN: And the videotape in both cases is devastating. We only have 30 seconds, but, Angelique, we’re talking — this is our last segment here in Milwaukee. Outside the Republican convention, has the Trump team gotten in touch with you? Have your local police gotten in touch with you?

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They absolutely have not. And I don’t understand, you know, when we have evidence that Sam called home, that the shelterless community down there, by all accounts, of his character, and the character of the other person, it’s absolutely not making sense.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you want right now, as you speak to a global audience? We have about 10 seconds.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Yes. I want transparency. We want not the clips of the video; we want full clips. We want the autopsy report. You know, we really want justice for my brother.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re not going to stop here, even as we go back to New York. I want to thank you both for being with us. Angelique Sharpe, again, condolences, sister of Sam Sharpe Jr., an unhoused Black man killed by Columbus, Ohio, police not far from the Republican convention on Tuesday. And Wisconsin state Representative Darrin Madison, whose district includes Milwaukee, where D’Vontaye Mitchell was killed, we thank you so much for being with us. We’ll continue to follow this case.

Breaking news: The International Court of Justice has ruled Israel’s settlement policy in the Occupied Territories violates international law.

I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.