USA TODAY International Edition
Ex- officer in Wright shooting to face charge
Family calls it ‘ intentional’ use of force, rejects death was accident
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. – The former Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright, a 20- year- old Black man, during a traffic stop was charged Wednesday with second- degree manslaughter, a prosecutor said.
Washington County Attorney Pete Orput charged Kim Potter, a 26- year veteran of the Brooklyn Center Police Department, in the shooting Sunday that has inflamed racial tensions in this city just miles from where George Floyd died in police custody last May.
“Certain occupations carry an immense responsibility and none more so than a sworn police officer,” Imran Ali, Washington County assistant criminal division chief, said in a statement. “We ... intend to prove that Officer Potter abrogated her responsibility to protect the public when she used her firearm rather than her taser. Her action caused the unlawful killing of Mr. Wright and she must be held accountable.”
Agents with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension arrested Potter on Wednesday morning, Jill Oliveira, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said in a statement. Potter, 48, was taken into custody before noon at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul, Oliveira said. Online records for Hennepin County jail showed she was being held without bail.
Potter resigned Tuesday as calls for justice for Wright echoed throughout Minnesota.
Tim Gannon, the city’s former police chief who
also resigned Tuesday, said Potter accidentally grabbed her firearm when she thought she was using her Taser on Wright. Wright’s family has rejected police’s characterization of their son’s death as an accident and called for Potter to be held accountable.
If found guilty, Potter faces up to 10 years in prison and a $ 20,000 fine, according to Minnesota law.
“While we appreciate that the district attorney is pursuing justice for Daunte, no conviction can give the Wright family their loved one back,” Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing Wright’s family, said in a statement with cocounsel Jeff Storms and Antonio Romanucci. “This was no accident. This was an intentional, deliberate and unlawful use of force.”
The Hennepin County medical examiner said Wright died of a gunshot wound to the chest and ruled his death a homicide.
“A badge should never be a shield to accountability,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said. “Daunte Wright was brutally killed by a police officer, and justice must prevail.”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office handed over any charging decision to Orput as the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigates the case. Local prosecutors in the Minneapolis area agreed last year to refer cases involving police use of deadly force to prosecutors in other jurisdictions.
Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott said the case should be handled by state
Attorney General Keith Ellison “to ensure transparency and to continue building trust in our community.”
Potter is being represented by Earl Gray, a lawyer who also represents Thomas Lane, a former Minneapolis police officer charged with aiding and abetting second- degree murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death.
The shooting sparked protests around Minneapolis, an area already on edge as the trial of former officer Derek Chauvin in Floyd’s death was in its third week of testimony. Brooklyn Center is about 10 miles north of Minneapolis.
Floyd’s family joined Wright’s family at a news conference Tuesday organized by Crump, at which both families called for more police accountability.
“I never imagined this was what was going to happen,” Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, said as she recounted the final moments of her son’s life.
Katie Wright said her son called her after he was pulled over and told her police said he had air fresheners in his rearview mirror. Police said they stopped Wright for an expired registration.
Wright had an outstanding warrant, prompting officers to ask him to get out of his vehicle, police said. Katie Wright said she heard the encounter unfold over the phone before being disconnected. When she called back, the woman in the car with Wright answered with a video call and showed Wright sitting lifeless in the driver’s seat.
Potter’s body- cam footage, released Monday, showed Potter approach Wright as another officer had started arresting him. Wright pulled away and reentered the car in a scuffle, and Potter drew her firearm. Potter is heard shouting, “I’ll Tase you! I’ll Tase you! Taser!
Taser! Taser!” before firing, then expressing surprise that she had shot him.
Wright’s family and many in the Brooklyn Center community have called into question how Potter could not have realized she was holding her firearm. At a news conference Monday, Gannon said officers are trained to keep their firearm on their dominant side and their Taser on the other.
“After 26 years, you would think you would know what side your gun is on and what side your Taser is on,” Crump said Tuesday. “You know the weight of your gun and the weight of your Taser.”
There have been at least 15 other cases of “weapons confusion” in the United States since 2001, and Wright is the fourth person to have died in such incidents, according to data compiled by the website FatalEncounters. org and University of Colorado professor Paul Taylor, who tracks such cases.
In an interview Wednesday with WCCO- AM, Brian Peters, head of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, said Wright’s own actions set off the events that led to his death.
“This is going to be an unpopular statement … Daunte Wright, if he would have just complied, he was told he was under arrest, they were arresting him on a warrant for weapons, he set off a chain of events that unfortunately led to his death,” Peters said. “I’m not excusing it, but what we’re seeing in policing these days is that noncompliance by the public.”
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Peters’ organization would fund Potter’s defense. The group is also paying for Chauvin’s defense.
The area was under curfew for another night Tuesday, yet protesters and police clashed outside Brooklyn Center police headquarters.
About 90 minutes before the curfew deadline, state police announced over a loudspeaker that the gathering had been declared unlawful and ordered the crowds to disperse. That set off confrontations as protesters launched fireworks toward the station and threw objects at police, who set off flash- bangs and gas grenades.
Marches also drew crowds in Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Sacramento, California, and Columbus, Ohio.