Minneapolis (AP) — The race issue was mostly raised during the trial of former suburban Minneapolis police officer Kim Potter, who was convicted of manslaughter after saying she confused her pistol with a taser gun. Was not done.
However, Wright’s family and many activists have said that the murder of a 20-year-old black driver has always been a person, from the moment an officer decides to pull him to the moment the judge sentenced Potter to two years in prison. It is said that it was about seeds. Members accused them of paying more attention to white defendants than to black victims.
Ben Crump, a lawyer for Wright’s family, said after Friday’s ruling, “What we are seeing today is the American black-and-white legal system.”
Wright was killed on April 11 after an officer at the Brooklyn Center pulled him for an expired license tag and hanging fragrance from the rear-view mirror.
Police officers discovered that Wright had a warrant of alleged possession of weapons, and they tried to arrest him, but he pulled him away. The video shouted several times that a white Potter used a taser in the light, but she had a gun in her hand and fired once on her chest.
Many felt that traffic outages were the result of racial profiling and should not have happened. The shootings that took place when Derek Chauvin was being tried in Minneapolis for the murder of George Floyd were outside the Brooklyn Center police station, marked by tear gas and a clash between protesters and police. Triggered a demo for several days.
Family members and activists applauded in December when an almost white jury convicted Potter of one and two manslaughter charges. This week, they felt as if Judge Regina Chu had abandoned her justice when she gave Potter two years.
“The judge went beyond her limits and undermined the legitimacy of the judicial process that took place in this case,” said civil rights lawyer and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong. “We reemphasize why many blacks are distrustful of the judicial system at all levels,” she said.
Levy Armstrong said the ruling essentially overturned the jury’s decision to make Potter accountable, Chu’s attitude and comments during the ruling aroused distrust, and blacks were primarily sacrificed in the judicial system. He said he showed that he was seen as a defendant rather than a person.
“The judge made Kimberly Potter look like a victim,” she said.
Chu called it “one of the saddest cases” she saw.
“On the one hand, a young man was killed, and on the other hand, a respected 26-year-old veteran police officer made a tragic mistake by pulling a pistol instead of a taser.”
“The evidence is indisputable,” said Chu, who said Potter did not intend to use her firearms. She asked people who didn’t agree to try to sympathize with her Potter, and when she said she wasn’t going to hurt anyone, she seemed to choke and wipe her tears. ..
Ayesha Bell Hardaway, associate professor and co-director of the Institute for Social Justice at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said Chu’s level of kindness to Potter was amazing.
“If it’s not about race, she certainly emphasized making it clear that police officers value the public services we provide in our society,” Hardaway said. She said whites have long been more regarded in the judicial system and “we saw their reality unfolding when the judge was making her decision.” ..
Hardaway also said the judge’s words, and the fact that she became emotional when she announced the judgment, “from an expert’s point of view, you don’t want to see it.”
Levy Armstrong said Chu showed a lack of empathy for the Wright family, especially when encouraging those listening to walking in Potter’s shoes. And she said that one of the main reasons Chu fell below state guidelines was that the case was so wrong that it wasn’t as serious as the killings of other well-known police officers.
Jonathan McClellan, president of the Minnesota Judiciary Union, dismisses this ruling, especially in comparison to what he said was “many blacks, browns, and poor people” who were sent to prison as an example. Attacked as fair. He was particularly ranked as Chu sought empathy by calling a quote from Barack Obama “as if you and others could sleep better at night.”
Rachel Moran, a law professor at St. Thomas University, said he understands why judges think two years is appropriate. Potter was not at risk of recidivism, was sentenced to about 16 months in prison, and the shooting was considered a mistake.
However, Moran said the public was accustomed to seeing high imprisonment and not accustomed to merciful judges.
“What makes it so painful is that its mercy is not often shown to many other people,” Moran said. “It’s really hard to swallow two years for someone who killed someone,” considering those who spend more time in jail for drug crimes.
“While the ruling may be correct, it may still feel horribly unfair to those who have been active in the community and have seen the pain and trauma of higher sentence sentences,” Moran said.
Family members and activists pointed out the case of Mohammed Noor, a Somali-American who was a Minneapolis police officer when he killed a white woman, Justin Rustikh Dammond, in 2017. Two massacres.
Moran said the decision was made by different judges who thought in different ways, and both results could be justified. However, the actions are similar, and in reality, black officers have been sentenced more severely.
Delores Jones Brown, who teaches at Howard University in Washington and Randolph-Macon University in Ashland, Virginia, said the judge had clearly accepted Potter’s claim that it was a mistake to shoot Wright. ..
“There’s something to claim that you’re a 26-year veteran, shooting a young man in the chest with a firearm and thinking you’re using a taser that doesn’t go well with me,” Jones Brown said. ..
She said she was worried that the media would accept Potter’s story as an exact version of what happened. “And obviously, the story dominated the day in a ruling.”
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Find the full coverage of the Associated Press in the Daunte Wright case: https: //apnews.com/hub/death-of-daunte-wright
Wrights, activists injustice in Potter’s decision | WGN Radio 720
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