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Police shooting death of black man sparks protests in Wisconsin

Protests broke out late Friday in Madison, Wisconsin over the police shooting death of an 19-year-old black man, NBC News reported.
Madison Police investigate the scene of a shooting on Williamson Street on March 6, 2015 in Madison, Wis. (Photo by Steve Apps/Wisconsin State Journal/AP)
Madison Police investigate the scene of a shooting on Williamson Street on March 6, 2015 in Madison, Wis.

Protests broke out late Friday in Madison, Wisconsin, over the police shooting death of an 19-year-old black man, NBC News reported.

The man was reportedly walking in traffic and hitting pedestrians, according to NBC affiliate WMTV. A police officer followed the man back to an apartment, where the man reportedly attacked the officer. “The officer did draw his revolver and subsequently shot the subject,” Madison Police Chief Mike Koval said, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. The man was taken to a hospital, where he died, according to Koval. Authorities did not release the victim’s name, but he was identified by local media as Anthony Robinson. Robinson was apparently unarmed at the time of the shooting, according to NBC News.

More than 100 people protested Friday night around the scene of the shooting, NBC News reported. Some shouted “Who can you trust? Not the police.” There was also a sit in at Madison City Hall, which is located near the state capitol building and the University of Wisconsin’s flagship Madison campus.

An editor for the UW-Madison student newspaper The Badger Herald tweeted a photo of the protest and reported that the crowd chanted “black lives matter,” a rallying cry that has gained prominence in the wake of the police-involved deaths of black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York.

RELATED: Read the DOJ's full reports on Ferguson

The Madison shooting comes just days after the Department of Justice released a scathing report on the racially biased practices of the Ferguson Police Department. The police shooting death there of 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9 set off weeks of racially tinged protests in Missouri and around the country.

Photo via Michael Johnson/Facebook