The shooting last summer set off two nights of rioting, and neighbors said they'd had enough upheaval. "Do something different in the community, try as hard as you can to be peaceful". Smith's sister Sherelle added, "Don't give them a reason to take your life".
The trial for the 25-year-old officer began Monday, June 12.
The verdict came a day after the jury began deliberations, 10 months after the fatal shooting.
Family members of Sylville Smith and others gather where he was shot and killed by Milwaukee police in Milwaukee, Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016.
In the hallway of the courtroom, one person yelled, "He won't get away with this, he won't get away with this", before law enforcement escorted the man into an elevator, a WPR reporter on scene said. A jury on Wednesday acquitted Brown of first-degree reckless homicide in the killing of Sylville Smith, a 23-year-old black man, on August 13, 2016. The officer was sacked two months after the shooting when he was charged in an unrelated sexual assault. "We are certainly gratified that the jury agreed with that", he said.
"The jury's verdict was based on the objective evidence before it", Flynn said in a statement Wednesday. That's how the jury saw it too.
A former Wisconsin police officer who fatally shot a black man after he fled from a traffic stop has been acquitted of first-degree reckless homicide. Smith, who was armed with a handgun, ran away from the officers when he saw them exit their squad auto. According to a report by HuffPost past year, only 13 officers were convicted of murder or manslaughter in fatal on-duty shootings from 2005 to 2015.
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The encounter began when Heaggan-Brown and two other cops said they saw Sylville Smith's rental auto parked a foot away from a curb and suspected a drug deal was taking place.
Prosecutors argued Smith was defenseless at the time of the second shot because he had thrown the gun over the fence.
Jonathan Smith, one of Heaggan-Brown's defense attorneys, told jurors the former officer didn't have the benefit of seeing the events unfold in slow-motion, which is how prosecutors have shown jurors the shooting using still frames from bodycam footage. He was sacked in October after those charges were filed, not for the shooting, and prosecutors were barred from referring to him as "a former officer" during his nine-day trial. "A review of the body camera video from both Heaggan-Brown and [Officer] Malafa confirms that at the time of the second shot, Smith was unarmed and had his hands near his head".
Michael Crivello, president of the Milwaukee Police Association who watched much of the trial, thanked the jury on the MPA's Facebook page.
"He put himself between good and evil".
Family friends say they feel like no one is on their side.
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