Minnesota cop charged with manslaughter
MINNEAPOLIS — A white police officer, whose fatal shooting of a young Black motorist during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb ignited three nights of protests and civil unrest, was arrested Wednesday and charged with second-degree manslaughter.
Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center Police Department who turned in her badge Tuesday, was taken into custody by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at the agency's office in St. Paul, authorities said.
She was booked into Hennepin County jail and charged with seconddegree manslaughter for the fatal shooting Sunday of Daunte Wright, 20, in Brooklyn Center, where she will await her first court appearance, prosecutors said in a statement.
Potter, 48, was being held without bond, jail records showed.
Former police chief Jim Gannon, who also resigned Tuesday, said police video shows Potter apparently drew her handgun instead of her Taser by mistake when she opened fire on Wright after he broke away from a fellow officer and climbed back into his car.
Wright's family and their lawyer rejected the notion that an accident was to blame for Wright's death. The Washington County Attorney's Office said Potter was her partner's training officer at the time of the shooting.
“Certain occupations carry an immense responsibility and none more so than a sworn police officer,” Imran Ali, assistant criminal division chief and director of the major crimes unit for the attorney's office, said in a statement.
Wright was shot Sunday after being pulled over for an expired automobile registration and officers discovered that there was a warrant out for his arrest, according to the official police account of the confrontation.
In police video of the incident, Potter can be heard shouting, “Holy s---, I just shot him,” after firing a single shot that struck Wright in the chest.