The protesters – who shouted obscenities, shook the police station’s security fence and occasionally tackled water bottles – began to thin out as the evening clock approached 22:00 in Brooklyn city center.
Former Brooklyn City Police Officer Kim Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in the shooting at Wright (20) on Sunday during a stop. The former Brooklyn Center police chief, a majority non-white suburb, said Potter mistakenly fired her gun when she was planning to use her Taser. Both the chief and Potter resigned Tuesday.
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Potter – who was released $ 100,000 hours after her arrest on Wednesday – appeared with her lawyer, Earl Gray, at her initial appearance on Zoom on Thursday and said little. Gray kept most of the audience holding his camera to himself and only turned it briefly to show Potter. Her next court appearance was on May 17th.
Wright’s death was followed by protests outside the city’s police station every night this week, with protesters sometimes clashing with officers who drove them away with gas grenades, rubber bullets and long queues of riot police.
While the rally in downtown Brooklyn on Thursday night focused largely on Wright’s death, some in the crowd remarked that it was hours after police in Chicago released graphic camera video of an officer killing 13-year-old Adam Toledo, a Spanish boy, fatally shot in March. .
“It happens in every city, every day across the country,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota Chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, told protesters early in the evening before singing them in a song of “Say his name! Adam Toledo! ‘
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Protesters also tied air fresheners to the fence at the police station, nodding to Wright’s mother and saying her son told her he was pulled over for an air freshener hanging from his mirror. Police say Wright was stopped for registration that expired.
Wright’s family members, like the protesters, say there is no justification for the shooting.
“Unfortunately, there will never be justice for us,” Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, told a news conference on Thursday. “Justice is not even a word to me. I do want accountability.”
Ben Crump, family lawyer and others, points to the case of Mohamed Noor in 2017. The black former Minneapolis police officer fatally shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a white woman, in the alley behind her house after she called 911 to report who according to her is a woman who was assaulted.
In addition to second-degree manslaughter, Noor was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison. Potter’s charge carries a maximum of ten years in prison. Intention is not an essential part of any of the charges. An important difference is that third-degree murder requires someone to act with a “depraved mind”, a term that has been the subject of legal disputes, but it contains an act that is extremely dangerous to others, without taking into account human life. .
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Noor testified that he shot to protect his partner’s partner after hearing a loud bang on the group car and seeing a woman at his partner’s window lifting her arm. Prosecutors criticized Noor for shooting without seeing a weapon or Damond’s hands.
Many critics of the police believe that the race of those involved in the Wright shooting played a role in filing complaints.
“If the officer had been Black, perhaps even a minority man, and the victim was a young, white female wealthy child, the chief would have fired him immediately and the prosecutor of the country would have charged him with murder without a doubt,” Hussein said. said earlier Thursday.
Potter could be charged with third-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, says Rachel Moran, a law professor at the University of St. Louis. Thomas in St. Thomas Paul, Minnesota. But she noted that Potter would probably argue that using the gun was a mistake, while Noor never said he did not intend to use his weapon.
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“It’s a kind of compromise charge, which does not mean it’s not serious. It does,” Moran said. “But they do not reach for the most serious charge they could theoretically file. Nor did they wash their hands and say she has no criminal liability.”
The prosecutor who filed the lawsuit, Pete Orput, a Washington County attorney, did not return messages to comment.
Wright’s death came as the wider Minneapolis neighborhood awaited the outcome of the trial of Derek Chauvin, one of four officers charged in George Floyd’s death in May last year. Crump pointed out that the trial has the potential to set a precedent for ‘police officers being held accountable and sent to jail for the murder of black people’.
According to police, Wright was pulled over due to expired labels, but they wanted to arrest him after they discovered he had an outstanding warrant. The warrant was that he did not appear in court on charges that he fled from officers and had a gun without a permit during a meeting with police in Minneapolis in June.
The body camera video shows Wright struggling with police after they said they were going to arrest him. Potter, a 26-year-old veteran, pulls out her service pistol and hears him repeatedly “Taser!” for shooting. She then says, “Holy (explicitly), I shot him.”
Experts believe that cases of officers misfiring their rifle instead of a Taser are rare, usually less than once a year nationwide.
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Bauer made a contribution from Madison, Wisconsin. Associated Press authors Doug Glass, Mohamed Ibrahim and Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis and Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, contributed to this report.
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