Six years ago today, after the police shooting “death” of Jacob Blake, anti-racism protests & riots erupted nationwide. I spoke with Blake about the police shooting, and another close-range shooting that he miraculously survived. But the second shooting, at hands of a Chicago gang member, got virtually no attention.
In my exclusive new interview with Blake, he says police should be paid more, and that he’s “eternally grateful” to the Kenosha police officer who shot him.
“I don’t think [Officer] Sheskey is racist," Blake told me.
"He helped save my life.”
Nearly all details of the shooting were misreported, including Blake’s “death”. Even today, six years after the fact, the USA Today Network still reports Blake was "killed" by police.
After police shot Blake, Blake’s baby momma, Laquisha Booker, told press that Blake was “unarmed”, shot by police “for no reason”, and that she didn’t know why police were there.
Media and politicians quickly pushed the false story of "systemic racism".
In reality, Blake was armed with a knife during the altercation with police, and it was Booker herself who called the police on Blake, telling the authorities he was stealing her car, and "probably about to go crash it.”
Those key details were left unreported as Kenosha buildings burned, during three nights of riots blamed on Officer Sheskey, in the name of “Justice for Jacob Blake”.
I asked Blake what he thought seeing his face on posters at an “Abolish the Police” rally signs outside a Whole Foods in Greenwich Village, New York.
“Naw. I don’t agree with that,” he said.
BLAKE: “I think they need better training, but no. ‘Abolish the Police’—absolutely not. Then who we gonna call when shit get sour for us? We need law enforcement. Because there’s criminals. There’s people that don’t care about God’s law and don’t care about man’s law. And if we didn’t have that, there’s all types of people that cannot defend themself that have been saved because of the police.”
The 2020 Kenosha Police Shooting
On August 23, 2020, Booker and Blake were celebrating their son’s birthday, when an argument broke out between Booker and another woman. Blake decided to leave with their kids. Booker didn’t want Blake taking the kids and leaving with her car (which Blake tells me they used to share), so she called the police.
On the way to the scene, police were notified that Blake had an arrest warrant for criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, and sexual assault—all stemming from statements Booker made to police three months prior. (The sexual assault charge was later dropped in a plea deal.)
When police arrived, Blake was tased multiple times, but still resisted arrest. When Blake armed himself with a knife, police backed off momentarily, then as Officer Sheskey yelled “Drop the knife!”, he grabbed the back of Blake’s shirt, and ended up shooting Blake seven times.
It was widely reported that Sheskey shot Blake seven times “in the back.”
Blake told me, “That’s another thing. I didn’t get shot in my back, bro.”
Blake says the first shots hit his arm and shoulder as he shielded his face. The following shots hit his back.
Officer Sheskey and another police officer on the scene say Blake was turning to stab Sheskey.
Blake denies this.
What cannot be disputed now is that Sheskey helped save Blake’s life.
Blake’s new comment about Sheskey rubbing his chest to keep him conscious is perfectly consistent with what Sheskey told authorities when he was being criminally investigated by the state for the shooting:
WISCONSIN DOJ INVESTIGATION: “PO Sheskey stated that it appeared to him that BLAKE lost consciousness a couple of times but he applied sternum rubs on two (2) occasions and was able to keep him conscious.”
Despite the fact that Sheskey provided Blake timely life-saving medical care, Sheskey was labeled an "attempted murderer" by the ACLU, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, and Blake's father, Jacob Blake Sr.
A few years prior, somebody really did shoot Blake in an attempt to murder him.
Blake Sr. was present during the shooting, but he made no public comment. Neither did any other activist or politician.
“I got shot before this,” Blake tells me. “It was a black guy who did it.”
A Chicago Gang Member Shooting
BLAKE: "My dad had threw a party that night, and we all met up at IHOP. There was a guy sitting in his car pretty much the whole time before and we all pulled up…He started asking us, like, 'What y’all is?,' meaning what gang we affiliated with. Nobody out there was an active gang member…I certainly said 'I ain’t nothin.'”
When Blake denied any gang affiliation, Cornelius Jones, a member of the Gangster Disciples gang, shot him "in the torso, arm, and leg". Blake was never publicly identified as the victim, but Blake tells me he was the man who was shot that night at the Evanston IHOP in 2016.
So four years before worldwide news falsely reported that an “unarmed” Blake was shot by a white police officer, Blake really was an unarmed victim of gun violence, shot by a black gang member in Chicago. And it barely made the local news.
Only now, years later, after taking the basic step of speaking with Blake himself, without a pre-determined narrative, and letting him speak freely, has this perfectly tragic story, of the media’s systemically imbalanced reporting, come to light.
2020 was an election year, and Democrats invoked Jacob Blake’s name to frame the Trump admin—a strong supporter of law enforcement—as racist.
Ironically, years after all the media headlines and protests in the streets chanted “Fuck Donald Trump” along with “Justice for Jacob Blake”, Blake now proudly touts a social media profile pic of a defiant Donald Trump flipping the bird.
Blake says he created the image and made it his profile pic after Trump was nearly assassinated in 2024.
BLAKE: “When all that happened, I really liked Trump. That middle finger is to the people that tried to kill him…—even Charlie Kirk, he don’t deserve to die…I can relate, because there’s people that was happy that I got shot. You don’t even know me.”
The Jacob Blake riots in Kenosha were quickly forgotten. When Kyle Rittenhouse shot three attackers, on the third night of riots, national attention quickly turned to the Rittenhouse story (which was also propagated with tons of false reporting.)
The full details of the Blake/Sheskey shooting investigation were not released by the Wisconsin DOJ until January 6, 2021, just in time to get lost in the news cycle, as the same day a new riot—Trump supporters at the US Capitol building—would be given the media's full attention for the next several years.
Since the Kenosha tragedies, Blake says he’s become more spiritual, and shared his regrets with me.
BLAKE: “I regret not staying in church...[With] what I know now, you wouldn’t know me...Nobody else would know me for this. This wouldn’t have happened.”
Reflecting on the riots, Blake says, “It was almost as if, in the spirit realm, they was playin’ tug-of-war, and the rope just snapped.”
A Kenosha pastor shared a similar sentiment, as he recorded during the riots:
“The battle we’re facing isn’t a battle of one side versus another. This is really an enemy, an unseen enemy, doing damage, in the spiritual realm.”
See my new “Killing Kenosha” documentary trailer here!
https://www.givesendgo.com/killingkenoshafilm
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If I had been asked the question "what started the Kenosha riots?" I would have answered I don't remember. I'm sure I would have remembered when it happened and for perhaps a few months afterwards. Follow up reporting like this is often more valuable than what gets released ASAP.