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Dontre Hamilton Shooting: Fired Milwaukee Cop Won't Get His Job Back

The firing of Milwaukee police Officer Christopher Manney last year was proper, a police review board decided Monday night.
Image:
Dontre Hamilton in an undated family photo.Uncredited / AP — file

The firing of Milwaukee police Officer Christopher Manney last year was proper, and Manney won't get his job back, a police review board decided Monday night in the death of Dontre Hamilton, a mentally ill black man whom Manney killed with 14 gunshots last year.

The three-commissioner panel unanimously agreed that Police Chief Ed Flynn was right to fire Manney in October, NBC station WTMJ reported. Prosecutors declined to prosecute Manney in December, saying he'd shot Hamilton in April in self-defense — a decision that set off several days of protests in Milwaukee.

Manney is appealing his dismissal, but the review panel declared that he violated police rules in initiating the patdown that led to the shooting of Hamilton, who had been sleeping in a park. Investigators said Hamilton had schizophrenia and had stopped taking his medication.

The U.S. Justice Department has said it will review the shooting to determine whether it should pursue a federal civil rights prosecution.

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