BROOKLYN CENTER, Minnesota — The officer who fatally shot a Black
man during a traffic stop near Minneapolis mistakenly confused her gun for her
Taser, police officials said Monday, quickly releasing video as they tried to
ease tensions in a state on edge over the Derek Chauvin trial.
اضافة اعلان
In a brief clip of body camera video, officers from the
Brooklyn Center Police Department can be seen trying to handcuff the driver,
Daunte Wright, before he suddenly lurches back into his car. One of the
officers aims a weapon at Wright and shouts, “Taser! Taser! Taser!”
She fires one round, and Wright groans in pain.
“Holy shit, I just shot him,” the officer can be heard
shouting.
Late Monday, the officer who fired the fatal shot was
identified as Kim Potter, who has worked for the department for 26 years.
The announcement came as protesters faced off with the
police. Hundreds had gathered outside the Brooklyn Center police station for
the second consecutive night, defying the 7pm curfew.
Demonstrators occasionally lobbed water bottles and rocks
over newly erected fencing, chanting “killer cop” and “hands up, don’t shoot”
while officers clad in riot gear stood guard. Officers responded by
sporadically firing projectiles at the crowd and at one point released a
chemical agent that caused people to cough.
Mayor Mike Elliott of Brooklyn Center, in an interview on
CNN, urged the protesters to leave: “I’m asking everybody to go home. We need
to keep the peace in our city.” By midnight, only a few dozen people remained.
Even though many details about Potter and the shooting
remain scarce, the Twin Cities spent the day bracing for unrest. The mayors of
Minneapolis and St. Paul declared states of emergency, and professional
baseball, basketball and hockey games in Minnesota were postponed.
The fatal shooting Sunday took place in a region already at
the center of a national reckoning over police officers’ use of force against
Black people. As the investigation into Wright’s death in Brooklyn Center was
beginning Monday, prosecutors in a courtroom less than 17km away completed the
questioning of their witnesses in the trial of Chauvin, the former Minneapolis
police officer charged with murdering George Floyd in May.
The shooting of Wright, 20, caused an immediate outcry and
recognition by President Joe Biden, who said he was praying for the Wright
family and called for an investigation.
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