Kenosha sheriff, city police gave armed civilians license ‘to wreak havoc and inflict injury’ during last summer’s unrest: lawsuit

The parents of Anthony Huber on Tuesday sued Kenosha authorities alleging they not only failed to intervene during last summer’s demonstrations but incited the violence that caused the Wisconsin man’s death by allowing Kyle Rittenhouse and other armed civilians who clashed with protesters to “mete out punishment as they saw fit.”

The federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. Eastern District of Wisconsin in Milwaukee seeks unspecified damages against Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth; Daniel Miskinis, the former City of Kenosha police chief; and Eric Larsen, the city’s acting police chief; as well as unnamed officers and deputies.

Last Aug. 25, Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha from his former home in Antioch and joined numerous individuals armed with rifles who inserted themselves into chaotic demonstrations that raged for three nights in the city just over the Wisconsin border.

They clashed with demonstrators who had assembled after a white Kenosha police officer shot a Black man during a domestic disturbance. The man, Jacob Blake, is paralyzed from the waist down.

Prosecutors said Rittenhouse, at the time 17 and carrying an assault-style rifle, opened fire on Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Huber, 26, of Silver Lake, killing both. A third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, was shot in the arm but survived.

John Huber and Karen Bloom maintain their son, Anthony, who was among demonstrators protesting the police shooting, is a hero who sacrificed his life to protect others. Authorities say Huber, toting his skateboard, was trying to disarm Rittenhouse shortly after the teen shot and killed Rosenbaum.

“At the end of the day, (police) basically decided to turn the streets over to a bunch of armed vigilantes,” said attorney Anand Swaminathan, of the Chicago law firm Loevy & Loevy, who filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of Huber’s estate.

“Bad things are going to happen when you have a bunch of armed, untrained, so-called militia men who have been basically deputized by the police. It really created a serious powder keg situation that was foreseeable.”

The Loevy & Loevy firm immediately released a statement from Huber’s parents as the lawsuit was filed.

“The police are supposed to serve and protect,” said John Huber, the victim’s father, in the prepared statement, “but that’s not what the Kenosha police did. They walked away from their duties and turned over the streets of Kenosha to Kyle Rittenhouse and other armed vigilantes. If they had done their job, my son would still be alive today.”

The sheriff’s department and Kenosha police did not immediately comment Tuesday.

Authorities had advanced warning of the counter protesters’ plans, the lawsuit said. In fact, a local militia group had put out a call on social media that day to armed followers to come to the city and help protect businesses. Kevin Mathewson, a former Kenosha alderman and the group’s commander, emailed Miskinis, the city’s police chief at the time, and posted the message as an open letter on Facebook, the suit said.

“We are mobilizing tonight and have about 3,000 RSVP’s,” the email read, according to the lawsuit. “We have volunteers that will be in Uptown, downtown, and at the entrances to other neighborhoods.”

The group’s Facebook page had sought “patriots willing to take up arms and defend our City tonight against the evil thugs,” sparking responses such as, “Armed and ready. Shoot to kill tonight,’” the federal complaint said. Still, it alleges, authorities allowed Rittenhouse and the others to patrol the streets with weapons without questioning them, reviewing identification or attempting to disarm them.

Furthermore, the lawsuit said, law enforcement treated Rittenhouse’s pro-police group with “a different set of rules,” such as enforcing the city’s curfew order only on demonstrators who were assembled to protest police violence. In fact, the lawsuit quotes a Kenosha police sergeant’s words in the department’s internal messaging system just before 10 p.m. Aug. 25 that downplayed the threat posed by the armed citizens, whom he described as “very friendly.”

About a half hour later, shortly before the shootings, law enforcement officers were seen in widely distributed video footage offering water to Rittenhouse and his group and thanking them, with one officer stating, “We appreciate you guys. We really do,” the litigation said.

Swaminathan said police ordered the demonstrators to move south, thus funneling them into a confined area where they were met by the armed civilians. After the shootings, video footage shows, police allowed Rittenhouse to leave even though the teen was holding a rifle and had his hands up in what many interpret as a gesture of surrender.

Police cited more than 150 demonstrators with curfew violations but not a single counter protester was ticketed, the lawsuit said. Furthermore, it alleges if Rittenhouse and the other armed civilians were Black, police would have responded differently. It charges Kenosha-area law enforcement with systemic, racially discriminatory policies and practices.

“Defendants created an extremely and obviously dangerous and deadly environment, which led directly and foreseeably to the shooting of Anthony Huber and others,” according to the lawsuit. “Defendants’ open support of and coordination with the armed individuals in the minutes and hours before the shootings deprived Anthony Huber and the other protesters of the basic protections typically provided by police, and it was a license for the armed individuals to wreak havoc and inflict injury.”

The federal lawsuit seeks a judgment finding they committed several constitutional and state law violations, including conspiracy to obstruct justice based on discrimination; First Amendment retaliation; failure to intervene; negligence; intentional infliction of emotional distress; and wrongful death.

Rittenhouse is not a defendant in the lawsuit.

Prosecutors have charged him with several felonies, including intentional homicide, reckless homicide, recklessly endangering safety, and misdemeanor minor in possession of a dangerous weapon. An intentional homicide charge is the equivalent of a first-degree murder charge in Illinois.

Lawyers for Rittenhouse, now 18, maintain he shot all the men in self-defense. They said Huber and Grosskreutz were part of a mob that was chasing the teen. Video taken that night shows Huber reaching for Rittenhouse’s rifle as his skateboard hits the teen’s shoulder.

Rittenhouse remains free on $2 million bail. The money was largely raised through social media among conservatives and gun rights advocates who have held him up as a symbol for gun rights. Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, however, paint him as a white supremacist.

The teen’s pretrial freedom has sparked controversy. Most recently, prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to persuade Judge Bruce Schroeder to issue an arrest warrant and increase the teen’s bond amount because he had failed to inform the courts of where he’s living as he awaits trial.

That came weeks after prosecutors took issue with Rittenhouse visiting a southern Wisconsin bar immediately after his arraignment in a T-shirt reading “Free as (expletive).” Cameras captured the teen flashing hand signs appropriated by white supremacist groups, and a group of men serenaded Rittenhouse with a song purportedly favored by the Proud Boys, an extremist group.

In response, Schroeder ordered that Rittenhouse “shall not knowingly have contact with any person or group of persons known to harm, threaten, harass or menace others on the basis of their race, beliefs on the subject of religion, color, national origin, or gender.” The teen’s lawyers have said he has no ties to extremist groups.

A court hearing regarding pretrial motions is scheduled Sept. 17. The judge also set a Nov. 1 tentative trial date.

____