AG: Report on Madison shooting to prosecutor in 2 weeks (UPDATE)

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By TODD RICHMOND
Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Department of Justice’s report on the shooting of an unarmed 19-year-old biracial man by a white Madison police officer should be sent to prosecutors in about two weeks, the state attorney general said Thursday.

Attorney General Brad Schimel said his agency’s final report won’t include recommendations on whether Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne should file charges against the officer.

“I’m not here as a prosecutor,” Schimel said during a news conference. “The Dane County district attorney will have a very important decision to make. We will work hard to get the information to him as expeditiously as we can.”

Officer Matt Kenny shot Tony Robinson on Friday evening after responding to a call of a man who had assaulted multiple people and was running in traffic. Kenny forced his way into an apartment where Robinson had gone after hearing a disturbance and Robinson attacked him, police have said.

The shooting spurred several days of peaceful protests.

The state Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating under a Wisconsin law passed last year that requires outside agencies to investigate officer-involved deaths.

Schimel declined to go into any details of the shooting Thursday, saying releasing information in bits has caused turmoil in other racially charged officer-involved shootings around the country over the last year. Division Administrator Dave Matthews asked people to be patient, stressing that the investigation is massive.

Nearly 30 agents, analysts and supervisors have been working on the case, according to a statement department spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz issued before the news conference.

Matthews said investigators have conducted at least 60 interviews. They’re looking at what every witness, including Kenny, was doing in the hours leading up to the shooting, even to the point of how much sleep they got the night before, he added.

“We don’t get a chance to redo this type of investigation,” he said.

Kenny wasn’t wearing a body camera, but agents are examining video recordings from squad cars that arrived after the shooting and from devices people were carrying, he said. Matthews called the time it will take to review all the recordings “daunting.”

As for preliminary autopsy reports, Shimel said he would like them go to Ozanne before they’re released publicly, but noted the Dane County medical examiner is the ultimate custodian of those reports. A message The Associated Press left for Medical Examiner Barry Irmen on Thursday wasn’t immediately returned.