What Kenosha Looks Like After Riots and Looting

Virginia Allen / October 21, 2020

In just 48 hours, over 40 businesses in the quiet city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, were ravaged by violence, according to the Kenosha Area Business Alliance. Rioters looted and torched shops on the nights of Aug. 23 and 24. The Daily Signal traveled there to see what it looked like.

The city of 99,000, situated on Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee, is “a little big town,” Kenosha local and business owner Scott Carpenter says. 

Carpenter’s business, B&L Office Furniture, was burned to the ground in riots after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, 29. 

A Kenosha police officer shot Blake seven times in the back Aug. 23. Police said Blake, who is black, resisted officers responding to a call about a domestic dispute and had reached inside his sport utility vehicle before the officer fired. 

Blake, who was wanted on a warrant for third-degree sexual assault, is now paralyzed from the waist down. A video of the shooting quickly spread through social media.

Rioters broke windows of businesses, stole whatever they could get their hands on, and torched storefronts. 

The Daily Signal traveled to Kenosha several weeks after the violence to show our audience what had happened there. This is what we saw.