Third day of protests in Madison over officer-involved fatal shooting

MADISON, Wis. - A third day of protests in Madison over a fatal police shooting of an unarmed young black man began Sunday with an event designed to help children of all ages understand the tragedy.

'Is protest the right approach?” discussion leader Tonia Brock-Petroshius asked a group of families gathered at the Social Justice Center, 1202 Williamson St., a block from the apartment house where 19-year-old Tony Robinson died.

Rather than protest, 'I think this should be an ongoing issue, an ongoing conversation with your kids every single day about the community and how we integrate, not segregate people,” said Roberto Yanez, who is Latino.

Brock-Petroshius, who is black, said she was 'a couch potato about race” until she came to Madison and experienced racial profiling. She said she was exercising with a friend one night and was mistaken for a prostitute.

Brock-Petroshius said it's not too early to talk with her son Zion, 3, who attended the discussion, about race.

'To think that my son may be shot as he grows up in some kind of town, if not Madison, maybe the next place we are, I can't ignore the problem,” she said.

During Sunday's event, children made signs saying 'Black Lives Matter,” then joined their parents outside the Social Justice Center for an afternoon rally and march down Williamson Street and East Washington Avenue. A candlelight vigil was planned for Sunday evening outside the home where Robinson was shot.

'Madison is a Ferguson!” Brandi Grayson, one of the leaders of the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, proclaimed through a bullhorn before the march.

'We are no longer fighting and demanding civil rights, we are here because we demand to be treated like humans,” said Grayson, who helped form the coalition last fall after the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson and the ensuing unrest in that St. Louis, Missouri suburb.

Grayson stopped the crowd of about 200 in front of the apartment house where Robinson, a 2014 graduate of Sun Prairie High School, died following what police have described as an altercation in which Madison police officer Matt Kenny was injured.

A makeshift memorial has taken shape outside the house with heart-shaped balloons, candles, flowers, photos and a cardboard sign that says 'Rest in Power Tony Robinson.”

For about two hours Sunday, Irving Smith, 57, who has lived on the 1400 block of Williamson Street for 35 years, stood a few yards from four Madison police officers who were guarding the crime scene, holding a large sign that read 'Why” with no question mark.

Smith, a janitor at Genna's Cocktail Lounge who is also a frequent protester at the state Capitol, said he wonders why so many black men have been killed by police nationwide.

'It's more than a coincidence, and I ask the question, ‘Why?' '

His other question, Smith said, is why black men in Madison are arrested at eight times the rate of whites. A State Journal analysis in September found that 36.5 blacks per 1,000 were arrested or cited for drugs during an 18-month period compared to five per 1,000 among whites.

The state Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating the shooting, as mandated by a 2014 law that all officer-involved death investigations in Wisconsin be handled by an outside agency.

'We all deserve to know the facts in this case,” Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said in a statement issued over the weekend. 'Tony Robinson's family deserves that, our community deserves that, and the Madison Police deserve that. When the answers come, we will be open and transparent in communicating them.

'Our police officers serve us with respect, valor and dignity,” the mayor added, noting that 'a few hours earlier they were faced with hostile gunfire and managed to end that confrontation safely.”

Madison Schools Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham issued a statement Sunday saying, 'we have seen too many deaths of young people of color in our country and now, in our own community.”

She urged the community to 'support our young people and to examine, challenge and remove the institutional barriers that hurt our students, families and community.”

Supporters of Kenny, the white police officer who shot Robinson, also spoke up Sunday. Artist Mike Konya of Madison, who is originally from Kenya, told the State Journal that he and Kenny were friends at UW-Eau Claire.

He recalled spending a Thanksgiving holiday with Kenny and his family in the late 1980s. Konya noted that the job of police officer is very stressful.

'He's not a racist,” Konya said.