At least four of the suspects were Black, according to jail records. The fifth suspect was a minor, the sheriff’s department said in a statement.
“I’m to the point that I think society has to come to a threshold where there’s some people that aren’t worth saving,” Beth said at the news conference a day after the incident, according to CNN affiliate WTMJ. “We need to build warehouses, to put these people into it and lock them away for the rest of their lives.”
“We put them away for the rest of their lives so that the rest of us can be better,” Beth said.
He acknowledged several times during the news conference that he was not being politically correct.
The suspects were charged with retail theft and obstruction charges, the sheriff’s department said.
CNN has reached out to the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department for comment.
Beth said it bothered him that the high speed chase ended when the suspects’ car crashed into another vehicle. A 16-year-old who “had just obtained his driver’s license minutes earlier” and his mother were in the other vehicle, the sheriff said.
“This 16 year old reminded me of my own daughter who just received her driver’s license less than a month ago,” Beth wrote in his apology.
At the time, the sheriff said he met with two members of the Kenosha NAACP and that he planned to work with state lawmakers “to strengthen penalties for those that break the law and place Kenosha’s citizens in harm’s way in the future.”
The sheriff is among a group of law enforcement officials leading the police response to protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Blake was shot multiple times by police earlier this week.