| By Big Radio News Staff |
Beloit police are still not talking about circumstances tied to an officer firing a handgun at a Beloit man who authorities say was behaving erratically and rushed at the cop in a neighborhood on the city’s west side last week.
A Rock County criminal complaint released in a jail court hearing says a female Beloit police officer shot her gun at Thomas O. Sykes, 34, after she’d told Sykes repeatedly to stop running at her.
It was after officers showed up Wednesday afternoon at the 800 block of Oak Street to deal with a complaint Sykes was entering homes, assaulting young children, and acting erratically.
Sykes was up on charges in court on Friday for resisting officers and child abuse.
In an email to WCLO from Beloit Police Chief Andre Sayles late last week, Sayles declined to answer questions about the police shooting, even as the District Attorney’s had laid out some of the details of the shooting in the criminal complaint, and in the hearing in open court on Friday.
As of Monday, Sayles and the police department have continued to decline comment on whether the Beloit police officer is on leave following the shooting, and Sayles and police still haven’t said what steps the department is now taking in the aftermath of the shooting.
Sayles told WCLO in an emailed statement he’d personally release information when police wrap up an “ongoing investigation” into the matter. Sayles says until then, he’ll take no further questions from news reporters, and he told a WCLO news anchor to direct all further inquiries to a city spokeswoman who is not a part of the Beloit police department.
Beloit police department does not have a police official assigned to duties as a public information officer.
All details of police incidents are released through a city spokeswoman who works in the Beloit city manager’s office. That has been the city’s public relations and media communications protocol for several years.
Last week’s incident is the third time in the last year police have shot at someone considered a suspect in a crime in Beloit. Beloit police have been involved in two of those shootings.
In last Wednesday’s incident, the bullet the officer fired apparently missed Sykes, while two other police-involved shootings by Beloit officers in recent months ended in the deaths of people police shot.
Another police-involved shooting by Beloit officers killed 33-year-old Beloiter Michael P. Ward April 28 as he reportedly lunged at another person while wielding a blade in each hand.
The state’s Division of Criminal Investigations in an independent investigation says Beloit police officer Nicholas S. Rodenbeck, the officer who shot Ward, remains on leave. The Rock County D.A. continues a crosscheck of the state’s investigation.
It’s the first of the three police-involved shootings that police have not independently verified as having occurred, and Beloit police haven’t explained why they’re opting not to confirm the incident.
The D.A.’s criminal complaint indicates the officer fired a single shot at Sykes. The D.A.’s office says the bullet missed Sykes and did not injure him.
The complaint says the officer shot at Sykes as he was sprinting at her out of a sideyard. The officer was backpedaling away from Skykes on a sloping piece of ground, and she’d repeatedly told Sykes to stop advancing toward her.
The complaint says the officer fired a single shot and then shouted aloud she’d done so – and as she was backpedaling, she apparently slipped and nearly fell on grass on an embankment.
Witnesses told WCLO neighbors saw the incident unfold, and watched as Sykes went down after the officer shot her gun. They say Sykes then got up and appeared OK.
He was later loaded into an ambulance and transported away from the scene to be checked out for possible injuries. Police have only said Sykes was medically cleared following the incident, and was booked into jail later on Wednesday.
Court documents say Sykes had entered an acquaintance’s home, pushed a children to the floor, then went to another home at Oak Street, and tried to grab hold of a person he didn’t know.
A D.A.’s official indicated Sykes resisted officers during his arrest, which apparently rolled out after the officer shot at him man.
WCLO is not naming the officer who fired the gun at Sykes because Sayles and the police have not independently verified the accounts released last week in the criminal complaint and in open court – including a D.A.’s official describing the officer’s gunfire as a “warning shot.”
It’s not clear whether the bullet struck any object after it was fired, although authorities continue to say nobody was injured in the incident.
Beloit police have skirted talking about the shooting, only acknowledging the incident involved gunfire, but not confirming who shot a gun.
According to a Beloit Police Department internal policy WCLO obtained which outlines police protocol on “major police incidents” – including use of force and police discharging guns while on duty or off duty – police are required to report all such incidents immediately to a superior officer in charge during the time when the incident occurred.
The policy also says police should release the details of the incidents to news media “as soon as is practicable.”
Beloit police have the option to call in outside police agencies to look into a police involved shooting, something another Beloit police policy suggests is a best-practice.
But that policy only mentions outside investigation of shootings by police that result in death to another person.
In this case, five days later, police have continued to withhold public statements on the shooting at Sykes, despite Sykes already facing a criminal hearing in open court in a hearing that included release of official documents that outlined his arrest and the police shooting prior to it.