While the Derek Chauvin trial is going on in Minneapolis, another shooting of a black man due to police violence occurred just ten miles from the courtroom where the trial was held.  

On April 11th, Daunte Wright, was on his way to get a car wash when he was pulled over for having air fresheners on his rear mirror. 6 hours later, his body was still laying on the street where he was shot by a police officer. Wright was pulled over for a traffic violation, yet a police officer shot him. He was pronounced dead at the scene. 

The officer who murdered him was Kim Potter. Potter is a 26-year experienced police officer with the Brooklyn Center Police Department. According to the department, Wright had an outstanding arrest and during the traffic stop, Wright began to drive away and Potter opened fire, striking him. Wright had driven several blocks before crashing, police said. The officers claim that Wright had resisted arrest, but this case is facing backlash for killing someone as a result. Potter reports that she had “mistook her gun for her taser” and that “it (killing Daunte Wright) was an accident,” but this has caused controversy everywhere for the department trying to justify her actions.

Many took to social media to show the difference between a police-style taser and a handgun. However, the department claiming that she had mistaken the two seems unreal to the thousands of protestors due to Potter being a trained professional for 26 years. People are defending the officer for her accident while others are claiming that accidents come with consequences and that she should be charged for her wrongdoing. 

Both Kim Potter and former Police Chief Tim Gannon have resigned and fled their homes due to the risk of violence. Three consecutive days of protests in Brooklyn Center have followed in the mourning of Daunte Wright as he was known to be a hard-working, young father of an infant. Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing the Wright family, declared, “While we appreciate that the district attorney is pursuing justice for Daunte, no conviction can give the Wright family their loved one back.”

Earlier this morning, officer Kim Potter was released on a $100,000 bond after being charged with second-degree manslaughter for the death of Daunte Wright. After this announcement, many Americans online have been calling out the system for its unfairness. Several users have expressed their anger and frustration by calling out the white privilege in the system. Another user has compared this situation with the Philando Castile case where Castile was shot during a traffic stop by police officer Jeronimo Yanez of the St. Anthony police department in Minneapolis as well. Yet the officer who shot Castile was acquitted, just like officer Kim Potter.

According to a 2020 study by researchers from Harvard, Black people are 3.23 times more likely than white Americans to be killed by the police, and Black people are also 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed when killed than white Americans. Every 7 hours, a police officer kills an American citizen. 98.3% of killings by cops between 2013-2020 have not resulted in the officer being charged with a crime. In 2020 alone, police killed over a thousand people. Within those thousand, 58.4% of those situations happened when police were responding to suspected non-violent offenses or cases where no crime was reported. 8% of that total was a response to a mental health crisis that ended in death. As you can see, the abuse of power and privilege the police system has is brutal. 

The police officers are trained under a corrupt, racist, and terrible system that needs to change instantly, especially if cops cannot tell whether they are holding a gun or a taser even after countless years of experience. Daunte Wright deserves justice and Kim Potter needs to serve her time and pay the price of the murder she has committed. 

Sources:

https://policeviolencereport.org

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNsTPJ_n71K/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/13/us/kim-potter-daunte-wright-police-shooting/index.html

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12116288/minnesota-police-shooting-philando-castile-falcon-heights-video

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNr9IIwhIhw/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/us/daunte-wright-minnesota-shooting-thursday/index.html