MILWAUKEE — The theme of the Republican National Convention Tuesday was “Make America Safe Once Again.” The words appeared on a towering digital screen in Fiserv Forum above a GIF of three fighter jets against an orange sky. The GOP wanted the thousands of journalists here to know: Unlike Democrats, we support our military and our police. We are the party of law and order.
“I believe in an America where we defend the police, not defund the police,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), thought to be Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general if he wins a second term, said from the main stage. “President Trump will make that dream a reality, and that’s why we need him back in the White House!”
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Members of the predominantly white crowd sauntered around the arena, buying beers and cocktails, or stepping outside to play cornhole or smoke cigars. “Thank you for your service,” some of them told the many cops stationed there to protect them. The cops nodded in appreciation. Some of them posed for smiling photos next to the convention’s massive “TRUMP 2024” sculpture, or could be heard chatting about what a nice assignment this was. Inside the arena, the crowd broke into a chant of “Back the Blue!”
About a mile away from the RNC Tuesday evening — past byzantine barricades and checkpoints and tall black cages blocking off sidewalks; past gaggles of armed cops sent from Florida and Indiana and Michigan to guard these assembled Red Hats; past a freeway that has long demarcated Milwaukee, the country’s most segregated city, into Black and white neighborhoods — there was a much more somber scene.
David Porter, an unhoused man living in a tent encampment, walked onto West Vilet Street and fell to his knees in prayer. Next to him, the street was stained with the blood of his friend, an unhoused Black military veteran named Samuel Sharpe, who hours earlier had been shot and killed by police officers from Columbus, Ohio. “He didn’t bother nobody,” Porter said of Sharpe. “He was just a homeless guy trying to get by like everyone else.”
“Why are cops from Ohio way out here?” Porter said. “Had that been Milwaukee PD, that man would be alive right now. I know that because they know him. They would have used non-lethal force.”
A Milwaukee Police Department car cruised by as Porter spoke. “What happened here was completely unnecessary,” he said, tearfully staring down the block, where people from the community were gathering for a candlelight vigil. “Completely unnecessary.”
Body camera footage released hours after the shooting shows Columbus police officers — some of the 4,500 or so officers, in total, sent to Milwaukee for the RNC — spotting Sharpe, who they said was brandishing a knife, in an argument with another man. As Sharpe appears to lunge toward the man, the cops from Ohio begin firing multiple shots, until Sharpe’s body crumples on the concrete.
“The incident took place in the outer perimeter of the RNC, within the operational zone to which our officers were assigned,” Columbus police Chief Elaine Bryant said in a statement. “CPD officers encountered an armed individual threatening another person and subsequently discharged their weapons.”
At the vigil Tuesday evening, near the site of the shooting, Alan Chavoya, a member of the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said the city’s poorer communities had long feared a scenario like this.
“We warned them for years that it would be out-of-state police,” Chavoya said through a megaphone. “We are eight blocks away from the barricades of the RNC. How does the Milwaukee police, how does the city of Milwaukee, allow officers from Columbus, Ohio, to be unattended, unguarded, off their leash here, so far into Milwaukee? We told them this would happen.”
The assembled mourners and protesters held up signs reading “Justice For Sam Sharpe” and “No Justice No Peace.”
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“The city is so concerned with outside agitators and protesters and people who actually give a damn about this community,” said a woman, who gave her name as Laura and described herself as a co-chair of MAARPR, as she took her turn on the megaphone. “Forty-five hundred outside law enforcement officers. Those are the outside agitators they should be worried about. Those are the people that are doing violence in this community. This did not have to happen.”
Maria Hamilton, whose unarmed brother, Dontre Hamilton, was shot and killed by Milwaukee police in 2014, spoke next. “I know we still got another 72 hours of this invasion,” she said of the RNC. “It’s an invasion. Please be safe. Please be safe.”
“We do not condone the invasion,” she added, before addressing the RNC participants directly. “Do what you came to do and get the hell out of our town!” Her brother’s death did not lead to charges for the police officer involved, though he was fired.
There were prayers and moments of silence as members of the community lit candles. An unidentified man who briefly spoke to the crowd noted that if a small percentage of the money that the city spent on the RNC had been given to the members of the nearby homeless encampment Sharpe frequented, they would have all had homes — warm beds and a place to rest their heads — for years to come.
“That brother was a veteran,” Galen Tyler, an activist with the Poor People’s Army, said of Sharpe. Earlier that day, Sharpe’s family members had told the press he’d served in the military. “I’m a veteran too,” Tyler said. “And since I’ve been out of the military, I have received no love from the United States government. I have received no love from them.”
“Milwaukee spent millions and millions of dollars to make sure the people down there [at the RNC] are having a good time,” Tyler added. “They’re down there drinking champagne, eating all types of food. But yet they send police to a neighborhood where people aren’t getting their basic necessities, and prey on them.”
The protesters then went on a march, reminding each other not to step on the part of the street still stained with Sharpe’s blood ― a sign of respect.
Back at the arena, the RNC’s night of “Make America Safe Once Again” speeches had concluded. Drunk delegates made their way out, marching past the security perimeter and stumbling into bars. At the Saint Kate’s Hotel, journalists gossiped over martinis and Manhattans, spying on the various Republican politicians as they relaxed after a day of hobnobbing and interviews and posing for photos with fans.
There was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) sitting with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, all laughing loudly at some joke. A waiter brought a tray of shots for the group, and they enlisted the help of the night’s musical act, a man with a guitar, to sing “Happy Birthday” to one of their companions.
The guitarist, his Venmo handle displayed on a piece of paper pleading for tips, started to play Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You.”
“Trying to make some sense of it all,” he sang. “But I can see it makes no sense at all. Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor? Cause I don’t think that I can take anymore.”