Kim Potter has started doing speaking engagements at police conventions. Seriously?!

Potter is the officer who shot Daunte Wright to death, claiming she thought she was shooting a Taser and not a firearm. Potter spent 16 months in jail. She was given a light sentence and even a hug from the judge at her trial. The media treated her favorably. Even the prosecutor was easy on her.

No one has taken her to task for all the aspects of US policing and her actions that led to Wright’s death, and beyond some very general apologies, Potter has not taken responsibility.

Racist Profiling

Daunte Wright was pulled over for having an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. An air freshener started the chain of events that took his life.

This is typical. Cops target Black men for petty equipment violations like this. They are looking for an excuse to search, ticket, and arrest Black men based upon false logic that race, not poverty, is an indicator of crime.

This sort of profiling is why Black men are pulled over 7-8x as often as white men in Minnesota. Because cops also treat Black subjects more aggressively, this racist profiling leads to not just harassment, but disproportionate violence and punishment compared to white men under similar circumstances.

A Fumbled Arrest

Potter was a veteran training officer and working with a trainee that day. The trainee had Wright get out of the car and restrained him. Potter’s testimony claims Wright struggled. The body camera footage shows Potter grabbing Wright’s arm and then Wright fleeing.

Potter’s testimony introduces “fear on another officer’s face” as justification for using her weapon, but her interviews after the shooting do not mention this. It is hard to read whether Potter was intervening to help a trainee who was fumbling on an arrest, or if Potter interjecting herself into the arrest led to Wright fleeing. When questioned about the events, Potter is terse and defensive, not remorseful.

An Unreasonable Accident

When Wright tries to flee, Potter pulls out her firearm and shoots him in the chest. She claims that she thought it was her Taser, and indeed she yelled “Taser” before shooting. Tasers have a different mass, feel, and color. Officers are trained in drawing their Taser versus their handgun. It seems very suspicious that she would not notice the difference.

Wright was clearly fleeing, not attacking. There was no life-and-death urgency that required drawing and firing without checking what weapon she was holding, besides the likely manufactured “scared face” argument. Police training to use violence first when unnecessary or imprudent and Potter’s adherence to these practices stole Wright’s life. But Potter only acknowledges the mistake of “drawing the wrong gun”.

But even conceding this as an honest mistake, why the hell was she so desperate to subdue Wright with a weapon? He was in the driver’s seat of a car. The car was probably running. There was a passenger in the car. All sorts of unnecessary things could happen from Tasing him. Wright and his vehicle were both identified. The cops could have arrested Wright under safer conditions.

Afterwards

Daunte Wright managed to drive away after being shot. He eventually crashed some ways later, and died shortly after. Potter did not try to inform other officers that she had shot the car’s driver. She did not try to render aid. She spent the aftermath of the shooting worrying about what would happen to her, saying, “I am going to prison,” rather than trying to reduce the damage from her actions.

On the stand, Potter cried and said, “I am sorry it happened”. There is a lot more that she, and the system she represented, should have been accountable for. Kim Potter, if actually remorseful, had the opportunity to acknowledge the pattern of aggressive and racist policing is wrong. She chose not to.