MILWAUKEE—There are four thousand police officers here from out of town. On Monday night, I was hanging out with some big ones from McAllen, Texas, at Major Goolsby’s, unofficial Esquire HQ and onetime unofficial Milwaukee Sentinel bowling gatekeeper HQ. They told me that the Milwaukee PD was supposedly the organization designated to deal with the actual citizenry.

That was not how it worked on Tuesday. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Five police officers from Columbus, Ohio shot a man early Tuesday afternoon just west of downtown Milwaukee, three law enforcement sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The man died from his injuries, the sources said.

Weirdly, the only immediate comment came from the Columbus police union. The Milwaukee PD refrained from comment. The victim was one of those people who hang around parks because they have nowhere else to go.

The man who was killed was well-known in the neighborhood, several witnesses told the Journal-Sentinel.He lived in one of the tent encampments, was known by the nickname Jehovah and took care of a pit bull, they said. Police could be seen removing the dog from the encampment around 2:30 and putting it in a MADACC van.The man was identified later Tuesday as Samuel Sharpe Jr. by a first cousin, Linda Sharpe, who spoke to reporters at the scene of the shooting. Eddie Johnson, 55, a friend of the man, said he was a “beautiful person” who was known to walk his dog and carry a Bible. “I don’t understand this,” Johnson said. “He didn’t deserve that.”

Collateral damage outside the perimeter, where the world doesn’t count.

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Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. 

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