Milwaukee officer who has killed 3 in the line of duty since 2015 resigns

Joseph Mensah, a Milwaukee police officer who has killed three people in the line of duty since 2015, is resigning from the department effective Nov. 30, The Associated Press reports. 

The Wauwatosa Common Council approved a separation agreement with Mensah on Tuesday night, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Mensah was cleared last month in the February shooting of Alvin Cole, a Black teenager outside of a Wauwatosa mall. Police said Cole shot at Mensah, who is also Black, before the officer returned fire. 

The officer previously fatally shot Antonio Gonzalez eight times after police say Gonzalez refused to drop a sword in 2015. Mensah then shot Jay Anderson Jr. in 2016 as he was sleeping in his car, saying that Anderson had reached for a handgun. 

Mensah was suspended with pay from the Wauwatosa Police Department following a complaint from Anderson’s family, AP notes. 

The Milwaukee County District’s Attorney’s Office has ruled that all three shootings were justified as self-defense. 

On the same day Mensah was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in Cole’s death, Steven Biskupic, an independent investigator hired by the Wauwatosa Police and Fire Commission, recommended that Mensah be fired, according to AP. 

Kimberly Motley, an attorney representing the Cole family, shared Biskupic’s recommendations at the time. 

“If a fourth shooting by Officer Mensah were to take place, the public’s confidence in the Wauwatosa Police Department would be significantly eroded,” Biskupic wrote in his report.

Biskupic also said that even a single officer-involved shooting is unusual in a town as small as Wauwatosa, which was a population of about 48,000.