Swift action in the shooting of Daunte Wright:
The Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, after appearing to mistake her handgun for her Taser was arrested on Wednesday and charged with second-degree manslaughter following three nights of protests over the killing.
The arrest of the officer, Kimberly A. Potter, who is white, came a day after she resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department, as did the Minneapolis suburb’s police chief. Hundreds of people have faced off with the police in Brooklyn Center each night since Mr. Wright’s death on Sunday, demanding that the former officer be charged, even as the region is on edge amid the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis officer charged with murdering George Floyd last May.
Again, IANAL, but this seems to me to be the correct charge. I don’t think she intended to shoot him with a gun, and I think you would be guaranteeing she walked if you charged her with murder. I know this will anger many, but I find much more guilt in the system in this shooting than I do in Officer Potter.
Why is Daunte Wright dead and why is an officer going to trial and why is there unrest in the streets of Brooklyn Center? That’s the question everyone responsible for policing in this country should be asking themselves. And to answer that, you have to go through how we got where we are.
Why are police still stopping people for non-moving violations?
Why are police still racial profiling?
Why are police pulling people over for bullshit like expired tags?
Why were there so many police there- they feed off each other and act more aggressively in groups.
And on and on and on. I’ll even take it a step farther- why did they have to arrest him for the warrant right then and there. Why even elevate it to the point that a taser was “needed.” Even though he was showing mild resistance and got back in his car, why was it so important that he be arrested that very second? You have fucking radios. You know where he lives. It wasn’t a big enough deal to have him in jail to send anyone to his house to arrest him, why all of a sudden just because you’ve nailed him for the crime of having air freshener from his mirror or whatever bullshit pretext you used to initiate the stop did he have to be arrested right then and there.
Again, what is the worst that could have happened if he just got in his car and drove home, and you followed him home and arrested him there with his mom? Or a week later?
Why do we have a system of policing built around violence, dominance, and requiring instant submission and deference? It’s the same with all these fucking no-knock warrants and other bullshit. The Breonna Taylor murder is another instance of this. They had surveilled her apartment. They fucking knew she and her boyfriend were in there. Why the fuck could they not just sit outside by his car and wait for him to head to Sheetz or Getgo for a pack of smokes or a soda? Why did they have to go HAM and raid the place with pistols blazing.
Our system of policing makes no sense to me.
Update at 6:35 PM EDT by Adam L Silverman
Cole asked me to do a quick update for him because he’s away from his keyboard.
What’s even worse in the Breonna Taylor case is that the warrant was NOT for her fiancé, which was the man she was in her apartment asleep with, but, rather, for an ex boyfriend who did not live at her residence and who had been arrested ten blocks away, and, according to the attorney’s for Taylor’s family, 40 minutes before the time that the warrant for Taylor’s apartment was executed. Additionally, Taylor’s family’s attorney has alleged as part of their lawsuit against the city that the warrant issued for Taylor’s residence really had less to do with her ex’s allegedly criminal behavior and more with a local development scheme to drive residents out of the neighborhood so that it could be gentrified. We’re still waiting for further details on if this alleged scheme is at the heart of why the warrant was issued for Taylor’s residence, but if it does turn out to be one of the motivating causes, then someone in municipal leadership, including someone in the local prosecutor’s office and, perhaps the judge who signed off on the warrant, are dirty. Additionally, local reporting by the Louisville Courier Journal indicates that the Louisville Police made numerous false representations of facts – colloquially lied – on the warrant application for Taylor’s residence. This includes falsely claiming that the US Postal Inspectors in Louisville had provided them accurate information that Taylor’s ex – Jamarcus Glover – had been receiving packages at her apartment for him. The Postal Inspector indicated that Louisville Police hadn’t asked, that there was no evidence this was the case, and that when a different agency had asked several months before the Postal Inspectors had investigated and found the allegations unwarranted.
Open Thread: Biden Live on Afghanistan
VeniceRiley
Those are very good questions.
Jinchi
No, she intended to shoot him. She claims the mistake was that she discharged a gun instead of a Taser.
Firing a Taser already seems excessive for a traffic stop.
Ian R
Since they’re cops, the unfortunate answer is probably, “They’d have murdered his mom, too. (And probably shot the dog, if he had one.)”
pat
Cole, thank you for all this, which is exactly right.
Brent
The whole Breonna Tayler situation is much worse than that even because as we know, the guy they were looking for wasn’t even there and hadn’t been there in some time. He lived like 10 miles away. They were investigating the possibility that MAYBE he had some mail there which makes the whole thing even crazier and unnecessarily dramatic.
Villago Delenda Est
When one realizes that our system of policing owes a great deal to the age of the slave patrol, all things become clear.
Steeplejack (phone)
And Jonathan Pentland, that racist asshole in South Carolina from the morning thread, also has been charged.
debbie
These no-knock invasions have no place in a democratic society. And who the fuck arrests anyone for a dangling air freshener?
Brent
@Brent: Oh. And of course, even the whole mail investigation was bullshit because there never was any justification to believe that the subject of their investigation had any packages there. In order to get the warrant, they claimed that the post office inspector had verified such a possibility but they made that up.
mali muso
This article by Michael Harriot is a must read.
Amir Khalid
@Ian R:
As it happens, Daunte’s mother is white. I wonder if that has come up at all in the debate around his death.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack (phone):
Glad the fascist, racist, authoritarian drill-sergeant bully has been charged. That video this morning infuriated me.
msilaneous
My daughter posted this earlier today (I have permission to share and nothing to add):
This is my youngest son. He is 10 years old – half the age of Daunte Wright, but he looks like he could be his brother. They are both children of a white mother and a black father. I have two children with these genetics, but my youngest looks more like Daunte. Today, I sat and cried along with his parents when I listened to them talk about the loss of their child. I FELT their anguish. This one hit too close to home. I watched the video. I read all the sides. I taught myself about guns and tasers before I wrote this post.
I have so much respect and admiration for police officers and could never even come close to doing their work. They are most often heroes.
But that has NOTHING to do with the fact that I am fucking sick and tired of seeing the shit that is happening in our country. That woman had 26 YEARS on the police force. She was training another officer. She is incompetent and should be arrested for taking a life unnecessarily. Do I think she was racially motivated? No. It wasn’t conscious. It’s called IMPLICIT BIAS. Read about it if you don’t know what it is. But this kid is never coming home. He’s gone at just 20 years old.
Today, I asked my son,
“What do you do when you are 16, 18, 30 years old and a police officer pulls you over?”
And he replied, “Die”.![]()
#dauntewright #implicitbias #justice #angrymamabear
debbie
@Steeplejack (phone):
I hadn’t heard about this until now, but good.
Jager
I had a flat on the freeway one afternoon (a bunch of trash fell off a truck that under California law was supposed to be covered) I was in the breakdown lane surveying the damage, a California Highway car pulled up behind me, two CHPs in the car. The driver started yelling at me through the loudspeaker, “GET BACK IN YOUR CAR AND DRIVE TO THE NEXT EXIT!” I was surprised, I turned around a looked at them, the CHP started in again, louder this time, “GET BACK IN YOUR CAR AND DRIVE TO THE NEXT EXIT! IF YOU DON”T COMPLY YOU’LL BE PLACED UNDER ARREST!” I could see the cop on the mic, he was red-faced and angry as hell. I walked towards the cop car, the cop riding shotgun jumped out and unsnapped his fucking gun, he started yelling at me. I said, very calmly, “You want me to destroy a tire by driving 3/4s of a mile on it, rather than wait 5 minutes for me to change it?” He smirked and said, “You got it pal, and move your fucking car now.” If I had had been a black guy, I would have had the shit kicked out of me, arrested or dead. I drove to the exit and destroyed a brand new Perelli P Zero tire. Assholes.
smith
The utter despair of waking up to yet another of these killings, it seems every damn day. And then today I got an email from ACLU that says that just in the first 3 1/2 months of 2021 there have been more than 260 police killings. The horror is that we only hear about a tiny fraction of them.
Sis
I could not agree more with every word of this.
BOWTIEJACK
GOOD QUESTIONS ALL.
Plus, why are the police so afraid of American civilians that
the policy is “SHOOT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER”?
Are all Americans possible bomb-throwing Iraqi terrorists?
Why are people killed just for traffic violations?
debbie
@Jager:
Did you file a complaint?
rikyrah
He should still be alive ???
rikyrah
@Steeplejack (phone):
He picked on a child ??
Arclite
It might be a misperception on my part, but it seems that women police officers are charged more often than men in these cases. Does anyone have any stats?
Patricia Kayden
“Why are police still stopping people for non-moving violations?
Why are police still racial profiling?
Why are police pulling people over for bullshit like expired tags?
Why were there so many police there- they feed off each other and act more aggressively in groups.”
Racism.
Another Scott
Excellent questions.
As for her intent – she did intend to fire the weapon. She yelled that she was going to fire the weapon. It wasn’t somehow “accidental” (an “accident” is when you drop it and it goes off).
How a 26 year (IIRC) veteran could mistake a pistol for a taser, especially after the 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant, is not a reasonable question to my mind. If she was so hyped-up on adrenaline that she could not tell the difference, then that tells me that nobody should be carrying pistols in these situations.
Things have to change. This cannot continue.
Grrr….
Cheers,
Scott.
Jager
@debbie:
Yes, nothing happened. If I could make civilian arrests for all the traffic violations I see cops make I’d be writing tickets all-day.
Ruckus
None of us can say what was in her mind at that moment.
She has 20 years experience, she was training others, and she shot a man for nothing. The charges did not, as John said, rate 3 cops, guns, and a dead man. At worst this should have been a ticket. Policing in this country has gotten completely out of hand when an unarmed man is held in a hold that is guaranteed to kill him for doing nothing, when what should be a minor traffic stop ends up with a body instead of a signature. And it’s not of course just this one area, it’s everywhere. And the insurrection on January 6 is a part of the problem, that people that look like me, or John, pastry ass white people, think that they are so special that killing this man and that man and attacking the government, because their ideals are so fucked up they think it’s OK because racism is, to them , perfectly acceptable.
Now I have no idea what is/was wrong with the cop, but it is a major problem and this problem encapsulates a lot of issues.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
One of the really awful things is that most no-knock warrants are issued in direct violation of Supreme Court rulings restricting them. Officers are supposed to present evidence specifically justifying no-knock warrants on a case-by-case basis, but they almost always include some generic arguments about suspects flushing evidence down the toilet instead. The judges just rubber stamp the application even though it’s flawed on its face.
It points to one of the biggest barriers to real policing reform: a lot of what the police do is already against the rules, and they’re just ignoring them without consequences. Reforms aren’t going to get anywhere if the police are free to ignore them.
Steeplejack (phone)
@debbie:
Rerun for those who missed it.
JaneE
The state of American law enforcement is piss-poor. The normal treatment of minorities is borderline unthinkable to most white Americans, especially us older ones whose speeding tickets are decades in the past. Even rudeness didn’t happen to us, much less belligerence or violence.
Lousy training, poor screening, and unions that seem to think they need to defend the indefensible have created a situation where the good cops are too intimidated by the bad ones to do anything.
I just saw the report on the woman who stopped her fellow officer from using a choke hold by force. She was fired 15 years ago because it wasn’t justified. I don’t know what prompted the new decision but she just got back pay and her pension reinstated. What we need are a whole lot of reviews. We may not be able to go back for criminal charges at this point, but any administrative actions definitely need to be looked at again, in light of all the video evidence we have for misbehavior and lies on the part of sworn officers.
Arclite
@Another Scott:
She accidentally selected the wrong weapon. Because you select your weapon without looking at it, your service firearm and taser need to be in completely different locations to prevent accidents like this. Most departments have policies on this. I’m not sure in this case if her department has no policy, or if she violated policy. All that said, why she felt the need to tase when the guy was completely outnumbered and unarmed is beyond me.
brendancalling
It’s because cops are “heroes.” DUH.
even though there’s no such thing as a good cop, they’re “heroes.”
brendancalling
@Arclite: it’s because she’s a cop and that’s what they do.
debbie
@Steeplejack (phone):
Wow. Just appalling. The wife is no better. Deandre is very lucky there were also decent white people there:
Arclite
American police kill more people than the total number of non-police homicides in most other nations.
debbie
@JaneE:
I heard her interviewed on NPR this afternoon. Her partner got into a fist fight with her at the scene.
ETA: Here. She just got her pension back.
RSA
In 2019, police in the U.S. killed almost 1,100 people, 33.5 per 10 million. Contrast #1: Data are sparse, but that’s maybe 10 times the average rate in other OECD (wealthy) countries. Contrast #2: In the same year, 2019, 44 police officers were shot in the course of duty, about 1/25 of the reverse ratio.
In the U.S. police kill non-white people at higher rates than white people, with regional variances; young black men are mostly likely to be victims overall.
Changing rules here and there isn’t going to help. We also have no reasonable way to change the rules all at once; there are some 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., doubtless with 18,000 different sets of rules. We have a systemic problem, shot through our society, and it needs top-to-bottom change to fix. I’m not hopeful.
Adam L Silverman
Cole asked me to do a quick update for him because he’s away from his keyboard. Below you will find what I just updated up top at the bottom of his post.
Marcelo
I’ve seen enough cops playacting while they knew body cams were on to be suspicious of the cop yelling “TAZER TAZER” – Especially considering the Tazer and the gun are different colors, different shapes, different feels, it strikes me as far likelier she knew she was shooting him, she intended to shoot him, and she intended to pass it off as an accident.
I do agree with Cole that the manslaughter charge will be easier to win than a murder charge. Doesn’t make me feel better, though.
And yes, like everyone else, super important questions John is asking.
Martin
@Arclite: The policy is insufficient. Under stress you will go to your dominant side – which is where the gun is. That’s your muscle memory.
If tasers are the non-lethal alternative, then it should be on the dominant side and the gun on the non-dominant side, requiring conscious thought to reach for the lethal option. But tasers aren’t a non-lethal alternative, they are a more violent option in cases where no violence is warranted, as seen in why she pulled it out in this case. She’d never have pulled her gun – everyone there knows it. The taser gave her an option to escalate, so she did, and then muscle memory pulled the gun instead.
How many hours do they spend at the range training pulling that gun out over pulling the taser out? Of course she pulled the gun. It’s the default. Surprised it doesn’t happen more often.
joel hanes
Digby spent years on her blog warning us that the adoption of tazers would lead to exactly this kind of situation, through the steps:
I have yet to see any narrative of the encounter that in any way justifies Potter’s decision to taze Wright.
Stephen
This wiki link shows that US police are exceptionally prone to kill people. I live in Australia, where the police kill perhaps 1.7 people per 10million. In the US, it’s 34.8, a 20fold difference. In case you think the rate of criming is responsible, in the US, the rate of homicides is only about 4 times higher. I would say your police training is very much at fault.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country
Lige
There never should have been a weapon involved in the first place. Police shouldn’t even generally carry weapons in the first place (maybe they could be locked in the trunk) – and any time a weapon is drawn should result in a mountain of paperwork. Just being nervous shouldn’t cut it as a rationale.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
All this crookedness makes much more sense once you remember it all happened in Kentucky. But god, gentrification?!?
Another Scott
@Martin: +1
You said it better than I was trying to before I decided not to.
Regular cops hopped up on adrenaline shouldn’t be carrying deadly weapons since they’ve shown time and time again that they don’t have judgement enough not to kill people who pose no threat.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
Scalia’s opus hasn’t been posted in a while. Seems apt.
Emphases mine.
West of the Cascades
It seems like one part of the “why do we still have this shit” is qualified immunity – get rid of that, open up police departments and individual officers to massive judgments, and there’ll be some incentive to stop training people to respond with military tactics to an expired license plate. Just one piece of what needs to be a massive culture change and and end of society tolerating these tactics, but bankrupting local police departments and individual officers would have a way of focusing the mind.
glc
@Arclite: She had the weapons on different sides of her body. Different colors, different weights. The thought has occurred to the police that it is desirable not to confuse these weapons.
I’m pretty sure there’s something we don’t know that’s relevant.
Not sure what she spent her 26 years doing but I would guess it’s not that.
It seems to me that for anyone with a minimum of training this level of confusion is not easily achieved barring dementia, panic, or drugs. None of which immediately spring to mind as a likely factor. I imagine this will be clarified at some point.
Edmund Dantes
Though you run into a lot of sovereign citizen stuff with it watching “Audit the Audit” on YouTube has been eye opening to how bad policing is in this country.
What’s amazing is how often you’ll end up with 3-5 cops showing up to completely nothing burger situations. Also how often the cops don’t have the barest idea of the laws they are enforcing (and don’t even care they don’t know).
WaterGirl
@msilaneous:
Heartbreaking and enraging, all at the same time.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Baud:
What a maroon. I hope they’re still trying to locate his grave so that it can become a destination pissoir.
Procopius
@Martin: I would very much like to see an explanation of why she was allegedly under such stress. What happened that made her think she had to tase him? Why was her adrenaline so high she lost control and couldn’t feel the difference between a taser and a gun? Do tasers have triggers like guns? Are they shaped like guns? What was going on that got her so amped up? Also, why was she on street patrol in the first place?
Arclite
@Martin: Great points Martin, thank you.
Brachiator
@Edmund Dantes:
The cops want nothing less than total obedience and passivity. Anything less than that will suffice. They don’t even care if their commands are contradictory. They certainly don’t care about the law.
They also clearly believe, with some justification, that they can kill any black person and probably also most brown people, with complete impunity.
evodevo
@Ian R:
Yes. This. The cops seem to have NO instincts other than totally dominating a situation, and escalating the aggression. Time to completely overhaul the situation.
prostratedragon
@RSA: Meanwhile in the first year of COVID more than 3600 health workers died of the disease, which in most cases they would have contracted on the job.
Soprano2
You ask why they do these kind of stops. It’s because they’re hoping to have a reason to search the car and find drugs or an illegal firearm. You don’t think they really care about an expired license plate, do you?
Arclite
@glc: Martin had a great comment up above at 39 that makes a lot of sense.
TheflipPsyd
My humble opinion about this police officer is that she was showing off for the trainee. Her attitude goiing into the situatuation was that she was going to show him how to use his authority. This incident exemplifies the systemic problems of police training. Rather than training how to de-escalate situations, she immediately escalated the situation. I am so disgusted with this country and its policing. The police unions always put out how they are trained professionals and deserve to be respected for their professionalism. But it is clear they are not being trained to be professionals. Because all professionals are held to a higher standard. But when these incidents happen — back to the prepandemic normal of multiple times per week — all that gets put out is how their job is so dangerous and they were in fear for their life. Well, how can you you be a trained professional if you are constantly scared doing what are the main duties of your job? With power and authority comes responsibility. And if you want to use the power and authority than you need to take responsibility. When the power and authority is given to you, than you are responsible and must be held accountable when a “mistake” kills someone else.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jager: Yep. I cannot recall the last time I saw a police car in motion that wasn’t in violation — usually speeding and making dangerous lane changes. Total. Fucking. Assholes.
It’s a lifestyle for them.
Barbara
@Procopius: I would bet money that if she was actually training others, she felt compelled to exert maximum control over the situation. That’s not an excuse, if anything it makes the situation worse.
Barbara
@Jager: Something similar happened to me. I felt like I was in a hostage situation, trying to keep my captor calm. Jesus.
taumaturgo
Is up to white America to mobilize for an end to police brutality and summary lynchings of black and brown people. If white America continues to shrug its collective shoulders in apathy and discouragement, refusing to listen to the cry of enough is enough while exonerating even the few “bad apples”, the violent escalation under the banner of law and order will continue unabated.
rikyrah
@msilaneous:
???
He died because of $1 air freshener on his mirror.
I just can’t.
ant
I can tell you why none of these things will change: Because Republicans want white men in power, and everybody else put in their place according to graduated inequality.
The police are a tool for the putting in place part. A large fraction of Americans want people like Daunte to not get uppity. To know his place. The police are a key part to accomplish this. These people are gleeful that Daunte is dead because his death puts others like him in their place.
Even the people who don’t bother to think about what it is like to be in a lower place in society still intuitively know that the system benefits them. They are afraid of equality.
msilaneous
@rikyrah:
Yes
trnc
Adam addressed this in his post on Tuesday : training by Bill “Deadly force is always appropriate” Lewinski.
Omnes Omnibus
If we are supposed to recognize and respect cops as tough professionals, they they need to do their fucking jobs with professionalism and toughness. What I see too much of is fear and demands that we respect their authority.
moops
Or,…or… you can yell “Taser Taser Taser” three times and when you murder someone you get charged with manslaughter instead of murder.
Mike G
Even though he was showing mild resistance and got back in his car, why was it so important that he be arrested that very second?
Because American cop procedure demands they dominate every situation and escalate at the least verbal contradiction let alone physical resistance. Backing down or accommodating like a normal human being is verboten. Part of the job that attracts bullies and assholes.
Combine with an insular ‘warrior’ culture that celebrates violence, tolerates rank unprofessionalism and enforcing their opinions as law knowing their ass will be covered.
Laura Too
I am going to add Fuck MTG. https://news.yahoo.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-wants-congressional-175951815.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr
WaterGirl
@Laura Too: She is an ugly person, inside and out. I’m going to guess that she might have been attractive once, but the ugliness is shining right through.
oclday
They knew he had a gun at one point based on his outstanding warrant, hence the extraordinary level of nervousness on the part of the cops, I presume. So WHY try to handcuff him in his open car door? Wouldn’t a rational human being take him to the back of the car, close the car door and cuff him away from his most obvious escape route and from the most likely location of a gun IF he had one? And this presumes that it was a reasonable stop, the dumb shits didn’t escalate the situation etc etc etc.