A Madison, Wisconsin police officer shot and killed a man who allegedly stabbed him with a knife during an arrest, and Governor Tony Evers responded not by backing the injured officer but by calling for "transparency and accountability."
The fatal shooting happened Wednesday in the Marquette neighborhood, a busy stretch of restaurants, bars, and homes less than two miles from the state Capitol. Madison Police Chief John Patterson said officers responded to calls about a man trying to break into parked vehicles. When they found him, the man fled on a bicycle. Four officers surrounded him, and he either fell or was pulled from the bike.
What followed turned violent fast. One officer deployed a Taser but failed to subdue the man, who police said resisted arrest and injured an officer with a knife. That officer, a veteran of the Madison force, fired the fatal shots. Bystander video captured audio of what sounds like three gunshots. A second officer was also hurt during the encounter, though police have not said how. None of the four officers on scene wore body cameras.
The absence of body camera footage leaves the public reliant on bystander video and police accounts, a gap that matters in a neighborhood with a raw history. In 2015, a white Madison officer shot and killed Tony Robinson, a biracial man, on the same street. Large protests followed. The district attorney filed no charges, ruling the officer was justified. Three years before that, in 2012, a white musician named Paul Heenan was fatally shot by an officer after drunkenly entering his neighbor's house. That officer was exonerated.
Chief Patterson acknowledged that history at a Wednesday news conference. He urged caution about drawing conclusions from cellphone clips and offered condolences to the dead man's family.
"I want to take a moment to honestly and sincerely offer my heartfelt sympathies to his family for this loss."
He also asked the community to consider the neighborhood's painful past:
"I ask that everyone in our community please keep this particular neighborhood and the historical trauma, including today, in mind, and please take a moment to reflect and offer some support to one another."
Police have not released the name of the man who was killed, described only as being in his 30s, or the name or race of the officer who fired. The Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation is conducting an independent probe. All four officers have been placed on administrative leave.
Governor Evers wasted little time framing the shooting. In an online post, he called for "transparency and accountability" in any investigation and wrote of the dead man: "His life mattered. We will continue to keep the loved ones and family of the individual who was killed in our hearts and prayers."
Evers did not publicly address the fact that an officer was stabbed with a knife during the encounter.
Democratic gubernatorial candidates piled on. Francesca Hong, whose campaign office sits a few blocks from the shooting scene, posted that she was "horrified and devastated." David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive also running for governor, issued a statement calling the incident "painfully reminiscent of the tragedies we have witnessed in Kenosha, Minneapolis, and far too many communities across our country."
Crowley called for details to become public, a reasonable request. But comparing the incident to Kenosha and Minneapolis before the state investigation has even begun tells voters where his conclusions already land.
Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, drew a sharper line. He called on his rivals to let the state investigation "establish the facts without politicians rushing to judgment or stoking division." Tiffany added that he would "work to end revolving-door criminal justice policies."
Voting in the August 11 primary is already under way, and the shooting has landed squarely in the middle of the governor's race.
Wednesday night, a crowd converged on the intersection where the man died. People carried signs and flowers. A candlelight vigil formed near the scene. Some chanted "Arrest the cops!" Protesters then marched to the state Capitol and took the stage at a Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra summer concert. The orchestra canceled the show.
By Thursday, the memorial had grown. Sabrina Thompson, a resident who was crying at the makeshift site, described what she felt.
"It's really unbearable. You can't describe it."
Ben Weger, a pastor from Stoughton United Methodist Church, planted a chair near where someone had written "Sacred Ground" in chalk.
"I don't plan to leave anytime soon because it's important to hold this space."
Brandi Grayson, head of Urban Triage, a Madison-based Black community advocacy group, said she believed the man killed was Black. Her statement carried the weight of an indictment already rendered:
"Another Black man is dead on a Madison street, and our community watched him die before we even knew his name. That is the cruelty of state violence."
Police have confirmed the man had a knife and that an officer was cut. But significant gaps remain. The dead man's identity has not been released. Neither has the officer's name or race. The exact sequence, whether the man fell from his bike or was pulled off, is unclear. Additional video exists but has not been made public. And the timeline for the state investigation remains unknown.
Those are the facts that matter. Not the political positioning of candidates who started issuing statements before the officer's wound was even bandaged.
An officer responded to a call, confronted a suspect, got stabbed, and used lethal force. That sequence deserves a full, fair investigation, not a governor's rush to frame it as another referendum on policing before anyone knows the dead man's name.
