Fact check: Jacob Blake did not 'brandish' knife, get gun before Kenosha police shooting
The above is only excerpts from the linked to article above, of course. I suggest reading the whole article yourself to get the full picture of what the author was able to gather from his investigation.The Facebook post avoids directly claiming a gun, instead attributing statements to Blake about having and getting a gun.
We don’t know what was said, and we may never know since the responding officers weren’t wearing body cameras. The Kenosha Police Department doesn’t use them. Audio in the cellphone video shot by a witness is hard to discern due to bystanders’ shouts.
So there’s no way to prove this part of the claim directly — though no witness reports have emerged since the incident that offer this account. The man who made the Facebook post did not respond to a request for the evidence behind the claim.
But we know there was no gun.
An Aug. 26 news release from the Department of Justice said officers found a knife on the driver’s side floorboard, but “a search of the vehicle located no additional weapons.”
The role of the knife is much less clear.
The DOJ has not clarified whether the knife was on the floorboard throughout the confrontation, or if Blake may have held it at some point. Spokeswoman Gillian Drummond declined to answer that question when asked by USA TODAY on Aug. 27.
Video taken by onlookers shows something in Blake’s hand, but the resolution is low, so it could be a knife, sunglasses or something else.
Blake’s attorney, Ben Crump, said in a statement released Aug. 27, “Jacob did nothing to provoke police. … Witnesses confirm that he was not in possession of a knife and didn’t threaten officers in any way.” But another attorney representing the Blake family, Patrick Salvi Jr., had told CNN the day before that Blake didn’t have a weapon in the vehicle, which turned out to not be true.
What we do know is that referring to Blake as “brandishing” appears to be an exaggeration.
Video of the shooting shows Blake walking around the front of the car with his back to officers and his left arm swinging at his side, grasping some object.
Brandishing is defined by Merriam-Webster as “to shake or wave (something, such as a weapon) menacingly.” That’s not what the video shows.
We have no way of knowing for sure what Blake said, but we know there was no gun. And we don’t yet know if the knife police later found in the SUV was there throughout the confrontation or held by Blake at some point. But Blake was not “brandishing” anything in the video taken by bystanders. Due to the lack of evidence establishing these claims at this point, we rate this claim FALSE.
