BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn – The police officer who killed a man in a suburb of Minneapolis on Sunday did so by accident, officials said Monday, releasing a video from a body camera that the officer appears to be photographing: ‘Taser ! ‘ before firing her gun.
“I believe the officer intended to deploy their Taser, but rather shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet,” said Brooklyn Center Police Department Chief Tim Gannon about the shooting at Daunte Wright (20 ) Sunday during a traffic stop. ‘It seems to me, from what I saw, and the reaction and distress of the officer immediately afterwards, that it was an accidental dismissal which led to the tragic death of Mr. Wright. ‘
The officer, who was not publicly identified, was placed on administrative leave, officials said. Chief Gannon said Wright was initially pulled over due to a registration on the vehicle he was driving. The video shows a short fight between mr. Wright and police officers before one of the officers fired her gun.
After the officer resigns, she is heard on the video: ‘Holy shit. I just shot him. ”
In the hours after the Sunday afternoon shooting, protests, violence and looting broke out in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of 30,000 people north of Minneapolis. The shooting comes amid a national showdown over police misconduct and the killings of black people by police; Mr Wright was black. City officials did not identify the race of the police officer.
“We’ll get to this,” Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott told a news conference on Monday. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that justice is done for Daunte Wright.”
Mr. Elliott asked that the officer who Mr. Wright shot, should be fired. “My view is that we can not afford to make mistakes that lead to the loss of life of other people in our profession,” he said. “And that’s why I fully support the release of her officer.”
The Twin Cities region has been going on for weeks, as the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with murdering George Floyd, is underway in a courtroom in Minneapolis, less than ten kilometers from where Wright was shot.
An evening clock rule was instituted until early Monday morning and the school district in Brooklyn Center announced that it would hold classes virtually Monday.
Mr. Elliott said President Biden on Monday offered the support of his government; Mr. Biden is “sad to hear about the loss of life by law enforcement in Minnesota,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said and is expected to address the shooting in public later Monday.
Chief Gannon said an officer called Mr. Wright was shot Sunday afternoon after he pulled over his car for a traffic offense and discovered he had a warrant for his arrest. When the police Mr. Wright tries to keep going, he steps back into his car, after which an officer shoots him, Chief Gannon said.
Wright’s car then drove several blocks and hit another vehicle, after which police and medical workers declared him dead. Chief Gannon gave no information on how serious the accident was, although the passengers in the other car were not injured.
Katie Wright, who describes herself as Mr. Wright’s mother identified told reporters that her son was driving a car that his family had just given him two weeks ago and that he called her when he was pulled over.
“He said they pulled him down because he hung air fresheners on his rearview mirror,” she said. Wright added that her son was driving with his girlfriend when he was shot. According to police, a woman in the car was injured in the accident, but that her injuries are not life-threatening.
John Harrington, the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, said the unrest following Wright’s death had spread to a shopping center in Brooklyn Center and that people had broken into about 20 businesses there. By about midnight, most protesters had fled the police department. Once the National Guard troops and police officers arrived in Minnesota to support the police officers standing around the building with unrest and batons.
Democrat Tim Walz wrote on Twitter that he for the family of mr. Wright prayed “while our state mourns another life of a black man taken by law enforcement.”
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency investigating police killings in Minnesota, is conducting an investigation.
Brooklyn Center police officers said they have been working for years to diversify the force and improve community relations.
Chief Gannon, a white veteran of the US Marine Corps, had been with the department for 21 years when he was promoted to the highest rank in 2015.
“I really want the city to know and know their police department,” Chief Gannon told a television station at the time.
Among his goals, in addition to lowering the crime rate, was to attract officers with body cameras and make the power more representative of the diversifying population of the suburb.
Brooklyn Center – the office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Minneapolis Field Office and the birthplace of the first sheriff of Hennepin County – was recently more than 70 percent white in the 2000 census. But its racial and ethnic composition has changed dramatically in the last generation, and the community has had a majority-minority population since 2010, of which only 44.5 percent are now white, according to federal statistics. Twenty-nine percent of the population is black, 16 percent Asian-American, and 13.5 percent Latino.
In 2015, Chief Gannon said, he hoped to make the police force a reflection of the community.
“If they have these positive interactions,” he said, “they make contact with officers, not always at the back of a 911 call.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports from Brooklyn Center, and Julie Bosman from Chicago. Reporting was contributed by Azi Paybarah of New York, Shawn Hubler of Sacramento, California, Matt Furber of Brooklyn Center, and Neil Vigdor of Greenwich, Conn. Kitty Bennett contributed research.