A new Wisconsin law was supposed to get justice for slain victims of police shootings, like Dontre Hamilton. Here’s what happened.
Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed
The second time the two Milwaukee police officers were called to Red Arrow Park about Dontre Hamilton sleeping on the bench, the cops went right up to the Starbucks first.
The police told the baristas who placed the call, "He's doing nothing illegal, there was nothing to enforce, and we should stop calling," according to a written account posted online by one of the Starbucks employees working that day, Kelly Brandmeyer.
An hour later, a third officer showed up. The baristas recognized Officer Chris Manney, the beat cop in their neighborhood. Manney was responding to a voicemail from dispatch and had no idea that two other officers had already checked on the sleeping man, twice. Manney approached Dontre.
Fourteen shots later, Dontre Hamilton was dead.
Over eight hours later, around midnight on April 30, 2014, 31-year-old Dontre Hamilton's family found out he had been shot and killed by a police officer. For the next five months, Officer Chris Manney's name was kept out of the media. Hamilton's death provoked fresh outrage in a community already frustrated over past incidents and has tested a new state law meant to hold police officers accountable for deadly shootings.
Six months later, the district attorney is still unable to tell the Hamiltons if the officer who shot Dontre 14 times that day will be charged with a crime.
"We're a family and we're motivated to do what we have to do for our brother," said Dameion Perkins, Dontre's brother. "But have we sat down and really cried our last cry? I can't tell you that we have."
Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed
Dontre Hamilton, his mother Maria, and his two older brothers, Dameion and Nate, moved to Milwaukee from Gary, Indiana, in 1995.
Maria wanted to get her sons away from the gang violence in Gary. All the boys played sports and were often out after games when a lot of the gang fights broke out. "I decided I didn't want my sons to be statistics," Maria told BuzzFeed News.
The Hamilton brothers were close. "I'm 12 months older than Dontre," Nate told BuzzFeed News. "He didn't have too many friends that I didn't know, and vice versa."
As a teenager in high school in Milwaukee, Dontre earned himself the nickname "Macho."
"He got in a few fights," Nate said. "We'd be like, what, you think you macho?"
Then Dontre got into football and lifting weights, and the name Macho just stuck. Especially years later when Dontre became Uncle Macho.
"They'd say they love their Uncle Macho," Nate said, referring to his 10-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. "He'd take them to get juices, chips, and he always had a bag of Twizzlers on him for the kids."
"If we wanted to go out to dinner in an adult-type setting, Dontre was like, 'I'll stay with the kids and order pizza,'" Maria said.
Dontre, his mother, and his brothers all lived in the Milwaukee area within 20 minutes of each other. Dontre and Nate worked together too at Nate's home improvement company. It was a trade that Dontre got Nate into.
"He started doing roofing and I followed him to work one day," Nate said.
In 2009, Dontre moved in with his mom after she had an accident.
"I cut off part of my index finger," Maria said. "He became my nurse."
At some point over the 18 months that Dontre lived with his mom, Maria started seeing signs that something was going on with Dontre.
"He would try to talk me out of having company at the house," Maria said.
Maria would occasionally hear Dontre talking at night. The next day she'd ask, "Were you on the phone last night?" He'd say, "No, I was looking out."
On Feb. 10, 2013, the family first realized Dontre was ill. He was having thoughts that his mother and his brother were being tortured. "He didn't want to live if he thought we were all going to be dead," Maria said.
Dontre stabbed himself in the neck at his apartment complex. He didn't even know that he harmed himself until he went to a family friend's house.
"My godson was like, 'Dude, what happened to you?'" Maria said. "That's when Dontre looked in the mirror and saw that he had injured himself."
That same day, Dontre was brought to a mental health facility and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, his family told BuzzFeed News.
The Hamiltons still don't know everything that happened on the day that Dontre harmed himself. Dontre told his family that he also hit a man outside his apartment with a shovel, but they never found a shovel, and nobody came forward to say that it actually happened.
"It was like the whole thing played out in his mind," Nate said.
While he was in the hospital, Dontre's family was told by the other tenants that he could not return to the apartment complex. His brothers were allowed to go over and pick up his stuff.
Over the next year, Dontre would have ups and downs. He found a medication to help him manage his paranoia, and there were no more violent episodes. After a stint in the hospital, he got another apartment in Milwaukee and was able to keep living his life.
"I know what the speculations are, that a person with mental issues can't take care of themselves," Dameion said. "Dontre had a car. He was able to maintain a job. He took care of himself just as any other person would. He was a man on his own."
But Dontre still struggled with his illness. "A week before the shooting happened, I felt he was getting more and more paranoid," Maria said.
In late April 2014, Maria arranged for an ambulance to go over to Dontre's apartment and check on her son. They told her that Dontre would be fine until his next doctor's appointment on May 7. The mental health workers told Maria, "He didn't look as though he was a harm to himself or anybody else."
When she spoke to Dontre, Maria said, "He was really paranoid though, saying that something was going on in another part of the house." Dontre also told Nate he was hearing sounds coming from the attic.
Dontre told his family his power was out and he had decided to leave his apartment and go to a hotel so he could watch TV and rest. "He didn't want to stay there in the dark himself," Nate said.
Maria's last conversation with Dontre came a few days later on the morning of April 30. Dontre still didn't want to go back to his apartment and was planning to leave the hotel and meet Nate in Red Arrow Park, so he could go over to Nate's house. At around 3:15 p.m., Maria spoke to Nate, who was on his way to meet Dontre. But it would be too late.
from BuzzFeed - Breaking http://ift.tt/1y4t3Sf
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