From this traffic stop, Daunte Wright will not come out alive. The 20-year-old black man died around 2 p.m. Sunday in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of northwest Minneapolis, after being shot and injured as police attempted to arrest him. This new episode caused an evening of tension between residents and the Minneapolis police, as the third week of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the ex-police officer accused of the murder of George Floyd, asphyxiated below his knee opens. The videos of his agony had provoked historic demonstrations in May 2020, all over the country, denouncing the systemic racism of the American police.
“They shot him”
On Monday, the Brooklyn Center police chief said the officer who shot the young man mistook his service weapon for his stun gun. “The officer intended to use her Taser but instead fired a single bullet” on Daunte Wright, explained Tim Gannon during a press briefing, invoking a “accidental shooting. The victim’s vehicle, which was driving with his girlfriend, was stopped because the validity of his license plates had expired. Officers then noticed something dangling from his rearview mirror, he added, which is illegal in that state. The police then realized that he was also the subject of an arrest warrant and tried to arrest him. According to video footage released by police on Monday, the young man was about to be handcuffed when he suddenly got back into his car and tried to free himself from the pressure of an officer. A policewoman, who has a gun in her hand, then fires a bullet at the young man, who manages to escape. The car continued to drive for a few hundred meters before hitting another vehicle. Police did not find a weapon in the vehicle. The shooting officer, whose identity has not yet been released, is “very experienced”, specified the police chief, without being able to explain the reason for this confusion. “She has the right to be heard and to give her version”, said the police chief, reacting to calls to dismiss the policewoman.
A crowd had begun to gather at the scene of the accident late Sunday afternoon, around 5 p.m. (midnight in France). “They told him to get out of the car, he got out of the car and his girlfriend [la passagère] says they shot him, he got back in his car, and he had an accident. And now he’s been dead since 1:47 p.m. testified sobbing Katie Wright, the mother of Daunte Wright facing the dozens of people and journalists present. She explained that she received a call from her son to warn her that he was being taken away by the police.
Establishment of a curfew
In the middle of the evening, demonstrators headed for the Brooklyn Center police station a few miles northeast of the scene of the accident, where several hours of tension followed against the police. Facing a human line of police guarding the building, reports local television CBS Minnesota, several hundred people were then gathered. Stores were ransacked, as well as in nearby Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park.
Police began using tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters around 10 p.m. after receiving projectiles, according to John Harrington, as organizers and Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliot called for a peaceful protest. “Our hearts are with his family and all those in the community affected by this tragedy. While waiting for new information, […] we support peaceful gatherings of community members,” he reacted on Twitter around two in the morning. Protesters lit candles demanding “Justice for Daunte Wright”. Schools in the city remained closed on Monday and a nighttime curfew was introduced from Monday evening to Tuesday morning for the second consecutive night.
On Monday, US President Joe Biden called on protesters to stay “peaceful”. “What Happened” Sunday “is really tragic but I think we have to wait and see what the investigation will tell us”, he told reporters in the Oval Office. “In the meantime, I want to say it again clearly: there is absolutely no justification, none, for looting”he added, before adding: “we know that the anger, the pain, the suffering that exists in black people in this context, is real, serious and important […] but that does not justify violence.”