What can 15 seconds reveal? In Milwaukee, a collision of policing, politics and activism

A dozen officers from Ohio chat in a Milwaukee park.

Gripping their bicycles, they prepare for their shift and discuss protests outside the Republican National Convention , the event bringing them to the city.

Then they notice two men poised to fight.

"He's got a knife!" one officer says.

They run, shouting for the man to drop the knives.

When he does not, five officers open fire and kill the man, named Samuel Sharpe Jr.

The shooting was over in 15 seconds. But the events of July 16 carried the weight of years of tension and debate in Milwaukee and nationwide over the role of police officers, the force they use, and the way they interact with vulnerable populations.

Crowds quickly formed Tuesday afternoon at the scene. Sharpe, 43, was a well-known member of a tent encampment nearby, often seen carrying a Bible or taking care of a dog named Ices.

“You got all of this locked up downtown. All of that locked up. And you come over here?” Webb Evans, who hires some of the men like Sharpe, shouted at a line of officers.

“These people ain’t voting for Donald Trump. He ain’t coming over here to campaign,” he said.

“What kind of sense does this make?”

To Webb and others, the shooting confirmed the fears they had when Milwaukee was chosen to host the RNC, a national security event requiring thousands of outside officers to assist the Milwaukee Police Department.

To others, including the city’s police chief and mayor, the shooting showed officers taking a life in order to save one.

There are an endless series of “what if” questions. What if Milwaukee police officers had handled the situation? What if no officers had been present? What if those living in tents had housing and their basic needs met?

And behind those questions, another series rises:

If any factor had been different, would Sharpe be alive? Would the other man have died?

Would everything still be the same?

Neighborhood has services to help people without permanent housing

The King Park Neighborhood sits atop a hill just west of downtown Milwaukee.

Anchored by a 21-acre park and community center , the neighborhood has a mix of people living there — longtime homeowners, renters and a sizeable population of people without permanent housing.

Two encampments have popped up over the past seven years, tucked behind buildings off West Vliet Street, near North 14th Street.

Sharpe had been staying there for about 10 months, a purposeful choice to spread the Gospel and give people hope, those who knew him said. He identified with the name Jehovah , getting it tattooed on his chest.

Sharpe had multiple sclerosis, a degenerative muscle disease impacting his mobility, but it did not stop him from being an active member of the community, his family said.

The neighborhood is a place where people can find help, share a meal and have a safe place to rest. A growing collection of services are clustered in the area. The Guest House and Repairers of the Breach have shelters nearby, and a soup kitchen is down the hill. The county’s new mental health emergency center is close by, as is the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center.

It's also a place where there can be conflict, over loud music, litter or other issues.

"You can't be mad because they are people in need and they need to go somewhere,” one homeowner told the Journal Sentinel .

“And at the same time, it is hard to be a homeowner right here.”

The local police officers who patrol that area — part of Milwaukee Police District 3, where the department’s current chief once served as captain — would be well aware of those dynamics.

So would the department’s specialty crisis response teams , which pair a county mental health counselor and officer to respond to non-violent mental health calls. Those units are based out of a city building about two miles west on Vliet Street.

Jeffrey Norman, the police chief, has said Milwaukee briefed all outside officers for the RNC about their duties and areas of patrol. Until Tuesday, much of the public did not realize those areas stretched into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Norman told reporters he could not share more specifics about the briefings.

Activists apprehensive about outside officers coming for RNC

Months before the RNC, activists peppered city officials with questions about the role of outside officers .

Where are they from? What rules do they have to follow? Will they wear body cameras?

The city convened meetings but rarely answered questions there, instead opting to respond in writing to attendees days later. One activist later called the sessions a "joke."

The fear of an occupying force descending on neighborhoods echoed earlier calls for police reform in Milwaukee and elsewhere.

In 2014, a white police officer killed Michael Brown , a Black teen in Ferguson, Mo., setting off waves of protests over racial injustice and police brutality encapsulated in the Black Lives Matter movement.

That same year, a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed Dontre Hamilton . Hamilton had been resting in Red Arrow Park when the officer responded to a call and confronted him , beginning the interaction that ended in Hamilton’s death.

It was a watershed moment in the city.

Since then, the Police Department has required more training for officers , added body cameras, banned chokeholds and changed other policies while activists kept up a steady push for change and accountability.

The department also continued to face controversy: A fatal police shooting in 2016 led to several nights of civil unrest. The department’s response to racial justice protests in 2020 came under intense criticism. The same year, an off-duty officer was charged with homicide after putting a man in a chokehold and later acquitted .

When the city won the bid to host the RNC, activists immediately raised questions about policing.

Milwaukee police officials said they did not intend to use outside officers for "forward-facing" roles , and they wanted Milwaukee officers to be the ones interacting with local residents. The agreements signed by the outside agencies reflected those goals, too.

But bicycle units, like the one gathered at King Park this week, were not considered “forward-facing,” the department later acknowledged.

At a vigil to remember Sharpe , activists including Hamilton's mother decried the recent shooting and condemned the role of outside officers. Speaking across the street from a mural depicting local Black leaders, they felt their fears had been prophetic.

"We warned them for years that it would be out-of-state police that would cause issues," said Alan Chavoya with the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

"We told them this would happen."

A 'tragic' situation leaves a man dead and a family mourning

The neighborhood, the RNC, years of police reform — all of it collided last Tuesday in the aftermath of Sharpe’s death.

“That man didn’t do (expletive) to nobody!” one man yelled in the moments after the officers shot Sharpe .

"He didn't touch anyone with that knife," another said.

Hours later, Milwaukee’s police chief appeared before reporters for a brief news conference. He, too, raised his voice, but it was in defense of the officers.

"Someone's life was in danger," he said.

It was the second, and last, time the chief addressed reporters in a public briefing during the RNC. Earlier in the day, he had been named one of two finalists for the chief job in Austin, Texas .

"These officers who are not from this area took upon themselves to act to save someone's life today," he said.

Soon after Norman finished speaking, police officials in Columbus released a 31-second clip of body camera footage of the shooting.

It shows police officers making a decision to use deadly force in seconds based on the situation in front of them.

How people judge that decision depends on their perspective.

Prosecutors focus on a tight window of time showing the use of force, in this case roughly 15 seconds. They weigh officers' claims that they perceived an immediate deadly threat to themselves or others.

Police departments often consider the full encounter to determine if an officer broke internal rules or policies, and look to see if decisions officers made increased the danger and likelihood of using deadly force.

In this case, outside experts have said the shooting appears lawful . Several have suggested local police, even if they were familiar with Sharpe, would have acted the same.

“People are saying that if the officer was from the area, they would have known,” said Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor at George State University and a former Memphis police officer.

“That’s a very hard task to put on a police officer, like they’re almost trying to predict the future.”

The city's mayor, Cavalier Johnson, called the situation "tragic" for all involved , including the officers.

"No one, absolutely no one, wanted this outcome," he said the day after the shooting.

For many members of the public, and especially Sharpe’s family, it’s impossible to untangle any one piece of the interaction: The role of outside officers in town for the convention, the decision to place them in King Park, the population of people living without permanent housing and example after example of police killings.

"What's legal and what's moral isn't always the same," Sharpe’s sister, Angelique Sharpe, said.

Drake Bentley and Alison Dirr of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What can 15 seconds reveal? In Milwaukee, a collision of policing, politics and activism