Allow me to preface this with puppies:

A seventeen year old right-wing militia member and huge fan of Donald Trump called Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two of them, at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin Tuesday night and the local police chief said-hang on, I should warn you, this is some pretty heavy stuff. Here, look at this pictured of some puppies first. It helps:

Look at'em, they're in a basket and everything.

"What? I'm not victim blaming, I'm just
saying it's their own fault they got shot."

-Chief Miskinis

Anyway, Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis had this to say to reporters on Wednesday:

"Everybody involved was out after the curfew. I'm not going to make a great deal of it, but the point is the curfew's in place to protect. Had persons not been out involved in violation of that, perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened."

-Chief Miskinis, victim blaming,
and making a great deal of it

"Look out, he's got a-oh, wait, he's white.
It's ok, stand down men, he's here to help."

-Kenosha Police, evidently

So if I'm following, Miskinis is saying that the problem here isn't that police officers saw a minor walking around with an automatic weapon at a peaceful protest and instead of doing something, or even keeping an eye on him, they handed him a bottled water and told him they appreciate his and other armed white people being there. Or, that after the shooting, the cops let Rittenhouse jog past them-rifle slung over his shoulder-as onlookers pointed and shouted: stop him, he just shot people!

You want to say something? Maybe condemn
the armed militia groups or voice support
for the victi-no? No. Yeah, I thought not...

And he's saying the problem isn't that one of his officers shot Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man in the back in front of his children in the first place. Or, to take it back even further, the problem isn't that we live in a world where police interactions with people of color frequently end in violence or murder and where peaceful protests are met with teargas and unprovoked beatings of unarmed protestors. And it's totally not that police departments and the Administration line up to protect the officers responsible.

Being a police officer requires training
and dedication and the ability to make
funny sound effects with your mouth.

The problem here, according to Miskinis, is that people were violating curfew, not that a smirking teen showing up to a peaceful protest with an automatic rifle failed to send up a red flag with his officers. Which, you know, Rittenhouse is not law enforcement just because he owns a gun and a MAGA hat (of course he does). In fact, he's seventeen, should he even own an automatic weapon? Either way, he definitely shouldn't getting high fives and bottled water from the police.

All this makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe the problem here isn't, as Miskinis suggests, the victims of Kyle Rittenhouse's delusions of militia-hood or the protests against police violence but rather him and the way he runs his department. Armed vigilantes don't make anyone, protestors or police any safer.

Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis seen here
socially distancing himself from responsibility.