Ex-Milwaukee police officer not charged for fatal shooting in park

A white, former Milwaukee police officer will not be charged in the shooting death of a mentally-ill black man in a downtown park last April.

The Associated Press reported that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Christopher Manney, the officer who was fired after the shooting, will not be charged in the death of Dontre Hamilton.

"This was a tragic incident for the Hamilton family and for the community," Chisholm said in a statement. "But, based on all the evidence and analysis presented in this report, I come to the conclusion that Officer Manney's use of force in this incident was justified self-defense and that defense cannot be reasonably overcome to establish a basis to charge Officer Manney with a crime."

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel noted that on April 30, Hamilton was shot 14 times by Manney after a business near Red Arrow Park complained about him sleeping on a bench there.

An internal affairs investigation concluded that a pair of officers checked on Hamilton twice and found that he was not doing anything wrong. Later, Manney, unaware that other officers had already been to the park, checked on the Hamilton and patted him down.

That is when, according to the investigation, the pair began to struggle with one another and Hamilton got ahold of the officer’s baton and hit him with it. Manney then shot him multiple times.

Hamilton suffered from schizophrenia and officials have since said that police will receive training for encounters with those that are mentally ill.

Manney is at least the third officer in the past month not to be charged with the death of an unarmed black man. The lack of charges have sparked nationwide protests.