The day after a white Madison police officer fatally shot an unarmed, biracial 19-year-old after an altercation on Madison’s Near East Side, Michael Johnson was worried.
Johnson had been in Ferguson, Missouri, last August in the days after a white police officer killed an unarmed black 18-year-old, and the city broke out in heated protests, some of which turned violent and destructive.
Johnson, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, said he “kept having these images of Ferguson in my head” on Saturday. “It was the fear of what this city could look like,” Johnson said.
But so far, Johnson’s fears have not been realized.