Arrested and charged. The Star Tribune’s Matt Mckinney reports: “Former Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly A. Potter was arrested late Wednesday morning at the offices of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the agency said in a statement. Potter, who resigned from the police department on Tuesday, will be booked into Hennepin County jail on a charge of probable cause second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death on Sunday of Daunte Wright, according to the BCA. The Washington County Attorney’s office was expected to file charges later in the day.”
Kids these days. WCCO’s Liz Collin reports: “There is growing concern over the number of young people in some Minnesota hospitals with COVID-19. For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the CentraCare health care system in Central Minnesota says 70% of their hospitalizations are patients are under the age of 65.”
A new front on the war against invasive carp. MPR’s Kirsti Marohn report: “Last week, [fisherman Tim] Adams joined a team of biologists and technicians from state and federal agencies in an operation to capture and harvest invasive carp from this stretch of the Mississippi River known as Pool 8, on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was part scientific survey, part defensive battle against a notorious aquatic invader that has been steadily progressing up the Mississippi.”
U of M police deployed to Brooklyn Center. The Minnesota Daily’s Ava Thompson reports: “After officers from the University of Minnesota Police Department were deployed during protests over the police killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, student leaders are demanding that UMPD withdraw from agreements to participate in ‘riot’ control. UMPD is a part of the West Command Task Force, a group composed of 35 police departments from across Hennepin County. The Task Force formed after the police killing of George Floyd to assist member police departments “in the event of an emergency that exceeds their own capacity,” according to a campus-wide email from President Joan Gabel.”
In other news…
Analysis: “How Could an Officer Mistake a Gun for a Taser?” [New York Times]
New art at 38th and Chicago: “Artists reflect on George Floyd in three new Minneapolis billboards” [Star Tribune]
Road trip: “Faribault, Martin counties struggle to fill vaccine appointments” [Bring Me The News]
Please explain this to me. A police officer training a rookie makes a fatal mistake and we show her booking photos. A 19 year old male chokes and threatens a woman with death if she doesn’t give him her money. The media shows dozens of sympathetic photos and references to him….. The moral person is criticized and the immoral one is mythologized primarily due to his race. We have gone from a moral culture to a therapeutic culture. It is not working. Therapy is about identity and morality is about character. According to MLK you should be judged by your character and not the color of your skin.
A couple things: the officer was in charge of training for the department, and even she, with all that expertise was unable to distinguish a firearm with a plastic taser, a weapon carried on the opposite hip from the sidearm, and is often brightly colored so, you know, they don’t get mixed up. She must have missed that day.
She was arrested, and that photo is public record, the young man was murdered, and publishing the face of the dead is sort of unseemly. Otherwise, you’re spot on.
Dan, are you referring to Brooklyn Center (former) officer Kimberly Potter as the “officer training a rookie”? Even if there was a rookie present at the killing of Daunte Wright, are you implying that this somehow absolves Ms. Potter from the consequences of her actions? As to the booking photos, once someone-anyone-even a former police officer-is arrested, the booking photos are public domain. Apparently you have a problem with that.
In your sentence # 3, you now refer to some unnamed 19 year old male and his alleged criminal actions. Who? What? When? Where? You don’t say. –or maybe he’s just a Black dude, and that’s all we really need to know in your world.
In My Humble Opinion, the red-hot scorching painful reality that has just been pushed, once again, into the faces of white Minnesota is this:
IF YOU ARE BLACK, THE POLICE WILL SHOOT FIRST AND SAY THEY ARE SORRY LATER.
Daunte Wright did nothing to deserve a roadside execution.
Kimberly Potter does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Because she’s white? NO. She was a trained and responsible veteran, who owed it to her community to do a better job. Killing a scared 20 year old kid because she wants to grab the Glock first is not OK. She needs to face up to the consequences of her actions.
I’m an old, white, finnish, northern Mn raised, retired construction worker dude. This white world has to live up to it’s so-called values.
I thought the person in paragraph 3 was obvious. Its Daunte Wright, the man who held a gun to a woman’s head and choked her. The man who put his hand up her shirt to steal the money in her bra. The man who threatened to shoot her.
Wright did not deserve to be killed on the side of the road. But this monster deserved to go to prison for a very long time.
The question of Daunte Wright’s guilt or innocence in an alleged robbery was never determined. He was never tried for this alleged crime. At the time that he was shot and killed, the Brooklyn Center police were trying to arrest him on a warrant issued because he failed to appear in court for an unrelated misdemeanor.
The robbery allegation is serious, but is still just an allegation that was never adjudicated. Mr. Wright was never convicted of any “horrible crimes”. I suspect that Mr. Terry is getting his misinformation about this from Sean Hannity or Charlie Kirk, or other conservative outlets that are fast and loose with the truth. Please check out Snopes.com for a more accurate review of Mr. Wright’s recent arrest record.
Daunte Wright probably did some bad things. He may have been guilty of the robbery allegations, but we will never know. However, this has little bearing on how the attempted arrest turned into a police killing within seconds. And to characterize him as a “Monster” after his killing is not helpful. It’s just a way to absolve the police officer of blame by smearing the dead man.
The “fatal mistake” by the officer also happens to be a crime. No matter how moral she may be (and I have no evidence either way as to her morality) she committed manslaughter and was charged appropriately.
I share your discomfort with the mythologizing of Daunte Wright. He committed horrible crimes and deserved a long prison sentence. What he did not deserve what to get shot to death in his car.
I wonder if the vaccination deficits in Faribault and Martin counties reflects the politically “red’ nature of that area.