Kenosha Sheriff Facing Renewed Scrutiny for 2018 Comments: ‘Some People Aren’t Worth Saving’

The Kenosha County Sheriff in Wisconsin is facing some renewed scrutiny over comments from a shoplifting case from 2018, wherein he said “some people aren’t worth saving.” Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth has garnered a lot of criticism this week for the way his department has handled the shooting of Jacob Blake and the ensuing protests and riots. Now, some incendiary past comments Beth made have resurfaced and placed him under even more heat.

The comments came while Beth was speaking in a press conference about a shoplifting case that ended in a high-speed chance. There were five suspects involved and all were Black. “I’m to the point where I think society has to come to a threshold where there are some people that aren’t worth saving,” Beth said. “We need to build warehouses to put these people into it and lock them away for the rest of their lives. These five people could care less about that 16-year-old who just got his driver’s license yesterday. They drove through a red light, they stole thousands of dollars worth of clothing, and they don’t care.”

During the press conference, Beth also said, “Let’s put them in jail. Let’s stop them from, truly, at least some of these males, going out and getting 10 other women pregnant and having small children. Let’s put them away. At some point, we have to stop being politically correct. I don’t care what race, I don’t care how old they are. If there’s a threshold that they cross. These people have to be warehoused, no recreational time in the jails. We put them away for the rest of their lives so the rest of us can be better.”

Beth later apologized for his comments, per The Hill, saying, “I should have kept my comments better directed toward the incident itself and not allowed my emotions to get the better of me at the time. I have been involved in hundreds of on-camera interviews and press conferences and have shared my emotions before, but never in this fashion or this extent.” Beth is not the only Kenosha law enforcement leader facing criticism this week, as Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis has been under heat as well.

During a press conference on the shooting of protestors — two of whom were killed — Miskinis seemed to blame the victims. “Persons who were out after the curfew became engaged in some type of disturbance, and persons were shot. Everybody involved was out after the curfew. I’m not going to make a great deal of that, but the point is the curfew is in place to protect,” Miskinis said. “Had persons not been out involved in violation of that, perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened.”