There is no doubt that 2014 had its share of exciting and heartbreaking entertainment news. From the good, like Lupita Nyong’o’s first Oscar win, to the bad, like Bill Cosby’s string of sexual assault allegations, there was no shortage of events to talk about. Here’s a look back at the Top 11 Black Entertainment News Stories of 2014.

There is no doubt that 2014 had its share of exciting and heartbreaking entertainment news. From the good, like Lupita Nyong’o’s first Oscar win, to the bad, like Bill Cosby’s string of sexual assault allegations, there was no shortage of events to talk about.

Here’s a look back at the Top 11 Black Entertainment News Stories of 2014.

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11 Black Entertainment Moments Of 2014 We’ll Never Forget

Moments before the NYPD cop killer executed two police in their patrol car on Saturday, he bragged about what he was about to do to two bystanders, according to authorities. The New York Daily News reports that Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, asked two men to follow him on Instagram, inquired about their gang affiliations and told them to “watch what I’m going to do,” according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. Seconds later, Brinsley shot and killed NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their cruiser in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. He then ran into a nearby subway station and killed himself, police said. Brinsley, who also shot…

Moments before the NYPD cop killer executed two police in their patrol car on Saturday, he bragged about what he was about to do to two bystanders, according to authorities.

The New York Daily News reports that Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, asked two men to follow him on Instagram, inquired about their gang affiliations and told them to “watch what I’m going to do,” according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce.

Seconds later, Brinsley shot and killed NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their cruiser in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. He then ran into a nearby subway station and killed himself, police said.

Brinsley, who also shot his ex-girlfriend on Saturday, has a lengthy criminal history.

He was arrested in Ohio for theft and robbery, and in Georgia for robbery, shoplifting, carrying a concealed weapon, disorderly conduct and obstruction of a law enforcement officer.

Brinsley said online that he was going take revenge on police for the killings of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and unarmed father Eric Garner in New York City.

Activist groups who had organized protests in response to the deaths of Garner and Brown condemned Brinsley’s actions.

“[This is] not our vision of justice,” Black Lives Matter said in a statement obtained by The Huffington Post Saturday.

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NYPD Cop Killer Just Before Shooting: ‘Watch What I’m Going To Do’

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A spokesman for boxing great Muhammad Ali says the former heavyweight champion’s condition has “vastly improved” since he was admitted to a hospital with a mild case of pneumonia during the weekend. Ali spokesman Bob Gunnell said Monday that Ali’s doctors hope to discharge him soon from the hospital where he was admitted on Saturday. Gunnell has declined to say where the 72-year-old Ali is hospitalized. He has indicated that Ali’s bout of pneumonia was caught quickly. Ali’s relatives say they appreciates all the prayers and well wishes for the three-time world heavyweight champion. Gunnell says no other details are being released because of the Ali family’s request for privacy. Ali has battled Parkinson’s disease …

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A spokesman for boxing great Muhammad Ali says the former heavyweight champion’s condition has “vastly improved” since he was admitted to a hospital with a mild case of pneumonia during the weekend.

Ali spokesman Bob Gunnell said Monday that Ali’s doctors hope to discharge him soon from the hospital where he was admitted on Saturday.

Gunnell has declined to say where the 72-year-old Ali is hospitalized. He has indicated that Ali’s bout of pneumonia was caught quickly.

Ali’s relatives say they appreciates all the prayers and well wishes for the three-time world heavyweight champion.

Gunnell says no other details are being released because of the Ali family’s request for privacy.

Ali has battled Parkinson’s disease for years.

Ali and his wife, Lonnie, have homes in Arizona, Michigan and in Louisville.

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Muhammad Ali ‘Vastly Improved’ After Being Hospitalized With Pneumonia, Spokesman Says

In this 24-hour news cycle — we continue to be concerned about how #BlackLivesMatter is covered and we challenge the ways in which a senseless tragedy, an isolated incident, is being used to send a chilling message to protesters and to shape a dangerous narrative primarily by the Patrolmen Benevolent Association’s Patrick Lynch. Mayor de Blasio and Chief Bratton have not pushed back on the newly shaping narrative. Our hearts go out to the families of officers Liu and Ramos. We ask the media not to erase from these tragic events that the shooting of Shaneka Nicole Thompson in Baltimore, is where these unfortunate events began, ending with the alleged shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsleyn, taking his own life. According to his own family we know he had a history…

In this 24-hour news cycle — we continue to be concerned about how #BlackLivesMatter is covered and we challenge the ways in which a senseless tragedy, an isolated incident, is being used to send a chilling message to protesters and to shape a dangerous narrative primarily by the Patrolmen Benevolent Association’s Patrick Lynch. Mayor de Blasio and Chief Bratton have not pushed back on the newly shaping narrative. Our hearts go out to the families of officers Liu and Ramos. We ask the media not to erase from these tragic events that the shooting of Shaneka Nicole Thompson in Baltimore, is where these unfortunate events began, ending with the alleged shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsleyn, taking his own life. According to his own family we know he had a history of mental illness and instability that was not properly addressed. Our hearts go out to all of the families that have suffered violence and loss connected to these events. In light of all we know, and with respect to all who hurt most now, we must not let misconceptions prevail.

This is a challenging moment, but we must maintain the integrity of our message and moral movement. We still have the moral high ground, and we cannot allow for it to be undermined. In 2011 when I was still in Arizona, I saw a similar dynamic play out with Sheriff Joe Arpaio. While human rights activists were clear and backed by evidence of racial profiling inherent in the “Show Me Your Papers” law, Sheriff Arpaio was intent on mocking and villainizing protesters and the communities that were suffering the most. He helped to set up a false dichotomy about how he was protecting “law and order” and the community was lawless. He stoked racial hatred and used his power and platform that helped build a base of extremists and positioned them to speak, in effect positioning politicians, lukewarm reformers, as having a moral center with “common sense” and “practical” solutions and proposals. We cannot allow that to happen. We do not have time for the platforms of people who stoke hatred or confuse the debate, and we cannot be satisfied with politicians telling us what is or is not possible.

The energy on the street is about justice and accountability — the system of policing is what is making us unsafe. With months of protests and organizing, we are finally at a moment where more people are newly open to understanding the institutional and systemic problems with policing that hurt communities of color and disproportionately black people. Policemen and young people who are considering joining the police should understand this too — it’s the system. Despite claims that there are good and bad cops — we know that the system is failing everyone, including the police. That’s why Lynch’s inflammatory rhetoric is alarming. For one, it continues to pit the police against the communities they serve in, fueling distrust further on both ends. Secondly it derails an important conversation. Thirdly — it serves to consolidate a base of people like those wearing “I can breathe” shirts and the teachers wearing NYPD shirts to school — and our energy is sucked into addressing their defensiveness and derailing difficult and courageous conversations about race. Conversations on how this is not about interpersonal racism — and police, even good-hearted ones, can unintentionally hold up a racially biased system that has damaging and dangerous life-changing outcomes for communities of color. According to the Stolen Lives Project, at least 265 people have been killed by the NYPD since Amadou Diallo, 133 since Sean Bell. The does not even get into the incidences of unnecessary use of force and police brutality and mistreatment on the street.

In addition to that, it is the everyday interactions and overwhelming police presence in our neighborhoods that also wear people down. Due to broken windows policing, the following interactions can lead to tickets, arrests and summonses, warrants if tickets go unpaid and in some cases, violence: jaywalking, sleeping on a park bench, spitting, putting your feet up on the subway and more.

The following data is from a November 2014 report from the Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) — Over $410 Million A Year: The Human and Economic Cost of Broken Windows Policing.

*For the first 8 months of 2014, at great expense in city dollars, de Blasio/Bratton’s NYPD has continued the same focus as the Bloomberg/Kelly administration on arrests for misdemeanors and other low-level infractions. From January through August, 2013, the NYPD made 155,831 misdemeanor arrests – nearly 20,000 per month. During 2014’s same 8-month period, the NYPD made 156,572 misdemeanor arrests, also nearly 20,000 per month.

*A stark racial bias marks the NYPD’s petty arrest practices. In 2013, 87 percent of the individuals charged with misdemeanors were people of color; in 2014, the figure has been 86.3 percent.

*At the conservative estimate of $1,750 per arrest, NYC will spend over $410 million in 2014 on arresting people, mostly low-income individuals of color, for misdemeanors and other minor infractions. For the 5-year period from 2009 to 2013, an annual average of 90 percent of the people arrested for misdemeanors walked out of the courtroom.

What Mayor De Blasio does remains to be seen, but he already brought back Chief Bratton, the architect and first person to implement broken windows/zero tolerance policing. In a piece paying tribute to Ella Baker, Marian Wright Edelman said something that I often recall these days when thinking of policing in New York: “Policies are no better than the people who are implementing them and their commitment to just treatment of the children and the poor.” How can we dismantle broken windows with Bratton, its chief proponent still at the helm? De Blasio must change that. Some of us have held the hands of friends or brothers as they struggled with military and police academy recruiters and though many of them never dreamed of being policemen, a lack of opportunities led them to those positions. That is a reality in our communities. We have to start imagining a new reality — this will mean fewer police and more social workers and teachers. This will mean creating more economic possibilities and investment that preserves and does not displace our communities. This will mean confronting decades of disinvestment in our communities.

It will be challenging to make changes at the core of what policing looks like today, but its clear that what we have today does not work and that the solutions must come from the community. In New York City, as the Coalition to End Broken Windows has made clear — we don’t need 1,000 new policemen in the new year, and we must ensure that does not happen. Rinku Sen, the President of Race Forward, has written about how police departments will need tailored, holistic, evidence-based change that gets to the heart of not just systemic racial bias, but a “race and …” approach to get at the totality of what may be causing harms which is only possible with evidence-based interventions. In Los Angeles, my Black Lives Matter sister Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac has helped lead an effort with Dignity and Power Now and The Coalition to End Sheriff Violence to establish a civilian review board for independent oversight of sheriffs — it’s a major victory.

We already have the energy and people’s attention in a way that we have not had it in a long time — but most importantly we have one another — the time is now for real, deep, substantive change.

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Staying Focused in the Movement for Racial Justice

This year, the HuffPost graphics and data teams did a lot, from visualizing #BlackLivesMatter protests, to finding out how many molecules of Beyoncé’s breath you breathe every day, to a major investigation of hospice care in the U.S. Below we’ve gathered links to our favorite pieces from 2014. Take a look at any you may have missed, and follow us for a daily dose of maps, charts and illustrations. Crime Chokeholds How and where the NYPD uses the banned tactic >> Why it took 25 minutes for one man to die of lethal injection >> Death Penalty Hot Cars Why children keep dying in hot cars >> Economy Minimum Wage What’s changed since the last time we …

Crime

Chokeholds

How and where the NYPD uses the banned tactic >>

Why it took 25 minutes for one man to die of lethal injection >>

Death Penalty

Hot Cars

Why children keep dying in hot cars >>

Economy

Minimum Wage

What’s changed since the last time we raised the minimum wage >>

NYC Rents

NYC is even more unaffordable than you thought >>

Cigarette Smuggling

The underground cigarette market, explained >>

Wedding Costs

How much you’ll pay for a wedding depends on where you live >>

Hospice, Inc.

Interactive database shows how frequently hospices near you have been inspected >>

Pay Pals

A look at CEO salaries and boards of directors of Fortune 100 companies >>

Entertainment

Author Insults

You’ll never believe which authors hated each other’s work >>

Famous Jennifers

Hollywood is just one giant web of Jennifers >>

Beyoncé

How much of Beyoncé’s breath do you inhale every time you breathe? >>

Movie Musicals

Things all movie musicals need to succeed >>

The Beatles

What is the U.S.’s favorite Beatles album? >>

Grammys

Proof that the Grammys love white rappers >>

Black Sitcoms

How to succeed as a black sitcom >>

Oscars

The roles women win Oscars for playing >>

Mean Girls

You need these Mean Girls charts in your life >>

Environment

Drought

Why California’s drought makes your tomatoes so expensive >>

Tornadoes

The months your state is most likely to see a tornado >>

Water Use

The most water-consuming are the ones in drought >>

Health

Backpacks

How backpacks mess with kids bodies >>

Raw Milk

Unpasteurized dairy products have lead to outbreaks of food borne illness >>

Measles

Pockets of unvaccinated individuals lead to measles outbreaks >>

Breast Cancer

Why black women are more likely to die from breast cancer >>

Sleep Loss

Sleep loss can have a big impact on your health >>

Office Plants

How to pick the best plant for every office >>

Politics

Fetal Harm Laws

Laws intended to protect pregnant women are used against them >>

Moral Injury

Experts are beginning to recognize that many veterans grapple with a new condition >>

Powerful Women

The language we use to describe women in power isn’t always pretty >>

Gay Marriage

Support for gay marriage is growing in Alabama >>

Domestic Violence

At least a third of all women murdered in the U.S. are killed by male partners >>

Elections

See how each state voted in the 2014 elections >>

Religion

Cardinal Diversity

There’s been a major shift in Catholic diversity in the last century >>

Middle Eastern Christians

There are almost no Christians left in the place where the religion was founded >>

Amish Population

The Amish population has boomed in the last few decades >>

Sports

Olympographics

Charting the 2014 Olympics >>

Sochi 2014

See how each country fared at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi >>

Superbowl

A cold Superbowl is a different kind of game >>

March Madness

Let the Predict-o-tron fill out your March Madness bracket >>

World Cup

See match results from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil >>

Black Baseball

The number of professional black baseball players is at 1950s levels >>

World

Pisa Scores

Surprising test results for students around the world >>

Ebola

The rise of Ebola in West Africa >>

Volcanic Ash

How volcanic ash effects airplanes >>

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The Year In Graphics: Our Favorite HuffPost Visuals Of 2014

This summer, I started a series focusing on the lives of black trans leaders. The second in this series of many to come, is Sasha Alexander, founder of Black Trans Media and the hashtag #BlackTransEverything. J Mase III: Who are you? Sasha Alexander: I am a non binary, mixed race, black trans artist, organizer, healer, educator and the founder of Black Trans Media. I am deeply committed to transformative justice, the power of the people, arts for liberation, the gifts of our own spirit medicine and I come from a youth organizing background. In 2000 I founded a GSA in my high school and got heavily involved in GLSEN student organizing and anti-oppression facilitation, this saved my life. …

This summer, I started a series focusing on the lives of black trans leaders. The second in this series of many to come, is Sasha Alexander, founder of Black Trans Media and the hashtag #BlackTransEverything.

J Mase III: Who are you?

Sasha Alexander: I am a non binary, mixed race, black trans artist, organizer, healer, educator and the founder of Black Trans Media. I am deeply committed to transformative justice, the power of the people, arts for liberation, the gifts of our own spirit medicine and I come from a youth organizing background. In 2000 I founded a GSA in my high school and got heavily involved in GLSEN student organizing and anti-oppression facilitation, this saved my life. Through LGBT/student of color organizing and community building I developed a language, a reason, and deeper understanding for who I am and could be. I have worked as a facilitator, educator, and media maker for over 15 years working with organizations like the GSA Network, Brown Boi Project, Global Action Project, Tribeca Film Institute, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and many more. I am so blessed to be married to the fiercest black trans warrior woman, Olympia Perez.

Mase: You started an organization called Black Trans Media. Can you tell us what BTM’s mission is and what you are currently doing?

Sasha: Last August 2013, after attending the painful community vigil for my sister Islan Nettles, a young black trans woman who was murdered in Harlem, I founded Black Trans Media. I realized no one was going to give me permission to do the work I felt called to do – to confront the intersections of racism and transphobia in a culturally black way, and so I started to do it myself. As a filmmaker and community organizer I was tired of seeing the media – and community organizations – role in perpetuating both transphobia and racism, so I founded black trans media outside of the non-profit industrial complex with the goal to reframe the value and worth of black trans people through community building and media. Grounded in principals of media as an organizing tool, decolonizing our language, and drawing off the power of storytelling, and the histories of black and brown queer and trans leadership and resistance, a space outside the institution. I also wanted to create a space that was non binary- meaning it wasn’t just for black transmen or black transwomen but for black trans people – gender-non conforming people – all of OUR peple. I felt that ideas of blackness and tran-ness needed to be shifted and I wanted Black Trans Media to be at the forefront of that analysis around racial and gender justice, using arts and media, storytelling and conversation.

We launched hard last year with our media campaign #blacktranseverything drawing on the power of cultural organizing and social media. This was my version of “black is beautiful” – in the face of murders against black transwomen, violence against black trans bodies, and all the internalizing realities that come with living black and trans – living as everything means not having to deny our blackness or trans-ness the richness we should have. This organizing came in the form of more cultural and community events like “Transgiving” our annual anti-colonial feast, “Trans-Africanism: a trans pan-african kwanzaa celebration” and more all held in my living room in Bedstuy Brooklyn “headquarters” of Black Trans Media feeding sometimes between 10-25 black/trans people of color and folks who love us. Black Trans Media grew in February 2014 when I hosted “Black Trans Love is Black Wealth” – an event to speak to the role of love in justice – and I met my wife black trans warrior and the Content Director of Black Trans Media, Olympia Perez. In March 2014 we hosted a Black Trans Media event featuring incredible black trans poets, it was like black trans def poetry jam, celebrating the launch of the incredible J Mase III’s new chapbook, and highlighting the poetry of Phoenix Nastasha Russell, and Olympia Perez; from that point on there was no stopping our work.

In August we hosted “Black, Red, and Blue: a night featuring the stories of black trans New Yorkers’ experience with criminalization” and featuring the amazing film “Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles!” directed by Seyi Adebanjo, and featuring the amazing host of the Kitty Bella Show, Katrina Goodlett. This event was organized to honor the life of Islan Nettles, one year from her murder and the inception of Black Trans Media. In the year since we’ve founded we’ve reached thousands and thousands of people online and in person. We’ve traveled to give workshops, spoken on panels, held living room feasts, Saturday night cyphers, and hosted revolutionary black trans performers; from KOKUMO Kinetic at our January 2014 “Tell It Like it Is” event to just this past October 2014 when we hosted the amazing artist Lady Dane for a incredible night of black trans power up in Harlem with a live band.

In October we organized and attended a rally in Bushwick Brooklyn following a hateful attack on a young transwoman. We’ve been putting out our interviews, videos, and media pushing the understanding of just who black trans people are and what we go through. Olympia Perez, our content director is releasing a new video on Black Girl Dangerous “I am Hear” in which I also included a new music track I produced called “Islan (wont you celebrate).” We’re in the works of photo, writing, video, and performance projects. This August 2015 we’re organizing the first ever Black Trans Film Festival out of Harlem NY. We do all of this with no direct funding, only love and power leveraging richness outside the non-profit industrial complex.

Mase: What do you think is that hardest part of the work you are doing?

Sasha: The hardest part of doing this work is never forgetting the root causes of our oppression and the realities of liberation while facing the most painful of lifes experiences. Living and embodying the world we want to live in, actively dreaming and imagining how we can build outside structures of colonialism and white supremacy is tough. And, decolonization is the hardest and yet most rewarding part, because I seek this for all my peoples and it is a life long process, it is a daily liberation and yet we so often forget to decolonize.

Mase: Do you have any role models? Who and why?

Sasha: My wife Olympia Perez is the bravest, most incredible person I know. She grew up in Bedstuy living her truth as a black transwoman combating immense violence and trauma, she is the sweetest, most creative, loving spirit ever. She is my role model because the way she deals with transhobia and racism head on, using media and confronting folks directly because it’s more than a matter of returning the gaze, more than surviving – we’re thriving, she inspires me to do so, having with her what I never dreamed was possible.

One of my mentors Sheila Petigny, an incredible Black indigenous healer and the originator of Ancient Roots Healing Arts, she’s been an immense guidance and power in my life. My first sweat lodge was with intergenerational black and brown trans and queer healers bringing me into ceremony and ritual in a powerful way, this has been a call to action of my spirit. My work as a healer has been deeply inspired by her spirit and life.

My biological mother, who I’ve never met. She was 16, assaulted, and still birthed me, she and I have a lot in common even though we’ve never met. Her strength to have me has given me more than I could even explain. She is a reminder that I am connected to spirits and life unseen, powerful ancestors and history.

KOKUMO Kinetic, was a big part of me starting black trans media. She and I would speak at length about our values in doing our work, and she reminded me of the legacy of black folks having to start their own businesses, companies, entities, organizations, and communities. We talked about our historical legacy as black trans artists, as revolutionaries outside of a system that would not serve us and my sister reminded me, healed with me, and reflected to me that we could be everything, as I saw her walk in this I felt reflected and reminded of my own power.

Mase: What do you think are the biggest things trans folks of color have to combat everyday?

Sasha: Institutions, even those that are funded to serve us, are not designed to support us and see us (trans people of color) thrive in leadership and life. The intersections of racism and transphobia are a battle everyday, neither our black nor our trans bodies have worth in this world the way they should- and this is a deep internal and external reality. We have to build with our communities, our media, our institutions, our families, our hoods, our lovers, and even our own hearts because we have internalized these messages. Everyday trans folks of color are in need of decolonizing their bodies, in a white supremacist patriarchal world that does not honor their self determination and actualization as bodies of color or trans peoples, the trauma we carry must be met with healing so we don’t continue to harm or be harmed. Wee combat trauma and terror every single day.

Mase: What makes you most proud of being both black and trans?

Sasha: My people make me so proud, YOU make me proud, when I look around a Black Trans Media event or at my #blacktranseverything community that I have connected to over the years I feel so honored and proud of who each of us is. To see all that we go thru and yet all that we are, it is nothing ever short of a celebration. Our history and legacy is immense, and most of it unknown to even us. I am proud of how we can love so deeply, how we can be ourselves no matter the cost, of Marsha P. Johnson, the Compton Cafeteria Riots, Olympia Perez, CeCe McDonald and her resistence, and so many names of black trans people in my life I cannot even begin to name them all.. KOKUMO, Louis Mitchell, Lady Dane, Kai Greene, Dr. Kortney, TEXAS, Kylar Broadus, Katrina Godlett, Ms. Kim, Justice Roe, Kye Allums, BIKO, Mr. Carter Brown, Seyi Adebanjo, Tanya Walker, GG Gaskin, Daniella Carter, J Mase III, Phoenix Nastasha Russell, and each and every single black trans person out there living your life, you make me proud.

Lastly, being in love with another black trans person makes me proud, because I am myself and she is herself and we could not love eachother more for it, and it’s like coming home, which as a black trans person, there’s nothing like it.

For more on what Sasha and th rest of the Black Trans Media crew are up to, find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube @blacktransmedia.

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To Be Black, Trans and Brilliant: Sasha Alexander

MILWAUKEE (AP) — A white Milwaukee police officer who was fired after he fatally shot a mentally ill black man in April won’t face criminal charges, the county’s top prosecutor said Monday. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Christopher Manney won’t be charged because he shot Dontre Hamilton in self-defense. Manney is at least the third white police officer to not be charged in the past month after a confrontation that led to a black man’s death. “This was a tragic incident for the Hamilton family and for the community,” Chisholm said in a statement. “But, based on all the evidence and analysis presented in this report, I come to the conclusion that Officer Manney’s use of force…

MILWAUKEE (AP) — A white Milwaukee police officer who was fired after he fatally shot a mentally ill black man in April won’t face criminal charges, the county’s top prosecutor said Monday.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Christopher Manney won’t be charged because he shot Dontre Hamilton in self-defense. Manney is at least the third white police officer to not be charged in the past month after a confrontation that led to a black man’s death. “This was a tragic incident for the Hamilton family and for the community,” Chisholm said in a statement. “But, based on all the evidence and analysis presented in this report, I come to the conclusion that Officer Manney’s use of force in this incident was justified self-defense and that defense cannot be reasonably overcome to establish a basis to charge Officer Manney with a crime.”

The Hamilton family released a statement through their attorney saying they were “extremely disappointed” with the decision and that the case “cries out for justice, criminal charges against Christopher Manney, and accountability to Dontre Hamilton’s family.”

The family said it has asked the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee to seek a federal investigation.

Manney’s attorney did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, Chris Ahmuty, issued a statement saying the decision not to charge Manney left “a cloud of uncertainty over the circumstances of and the responsibility for Mr. Hamilton’s death.”

Manney shot 31-year-old Hamilton on April 30 after responding to a call for a welfare check on a man sleeping in a downtown park. Manney said Hamilton resisted when he tried to frisk him. The two exchanged punches before Hamilton got a hold of Manney’s baton and hit him on the neck with it, the former officer has said. Manney then opened fire, hitting Hamilton 14 times.

Several witnesses told police they saw Hamilton holding Manney’s baton “in an aggressive posture” before Manney shot him, according to Chisholm’s news release.

Chisholm consulted with two experts on the use of force by police officers, and both concluded Manney’s conduct was justified. Emanuel Kapelsohn of the Peregrine Corporation concluded that all the shots were discharged in 3 or 4 seconds and there was no evidence that Manney continued firing after Hamilton hit the ground.

Police have no video of the event.

Manney also suffered minor injuries, including a bite to his right thumb, a neck strain and neck contusion, the report said. He treated for post-concussion syndromes, a mild traumatic brain injury and had physical therapy for bicep and rotator cuff injuries, the report said.

Hamilton’s family said he suffered from schizophrenia and had recently stopped taking his medication.

Police Chief Edward Flynn fired Manney in October. He said at the time that Manney correctly identified Hamilton as mentally ill, but ignored department policy and treated him as a criminal by frisking him.

The Milwaukee Police Association condemned Manney’s firing as a political move, and members voted no confidence in Flynn soon after the firing. Manney has appealed his dismissal.

Hamilton’s death preceded the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, but the case hasn’t attracted as much attention. Hamilton’s family has led mainly peaceful protests, trying to raise awareness about mental illness. Other protesters said his death underlined race concerns.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has said he will call up the National Guard if there is any violent reaction to the prosecutor’s decision. Police arrested 74 protesters Friday who blocked rush hour traffic on Interstate 43.

___

Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

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Former Milwaukee Officer Won’t Face Criminal Charges In Fatal Shooting Of Black Man

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder is directing Justice Department officials to expedite death benefits to the families of two New York police officers who were fatally shot inside their patrol car. A Justice Department official said Monday that Holder wants to ensure that the benefits are paid quickly and that the paperwork process begins as soon as possible. The official spoke on condition of anonymity since Holder’s directive had not yet been announced. The two officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, were ambushed inside their patrol car Saturday and shot to death. The suspected gunman ran into the subway station and committed suicide…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder is directing Justice Department officials to expedite death benefits to the families of two New York police officers who were fatally shot inside their patrol car.

A Justice Department official said Monday that Holder wants to ensure that the benefits are paid quickly and that the paperwork process begins as soon as possible. The official spoke on condition of anonymity since Holder’s directive had not yet been announced.

The two officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, were ambushed inside their patrol car Saturday and shot to death. The suspected gunman ran into the subway station and committed suicide.

The benefits are administered by the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs and are paid to first responders who die in the line of duty.

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Department Of Justice Seeks Benefits For Families Of Slain Officers