Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Note:  Due to obligations, I’m posting this, Friday’s article, a day early.

Chief Tim Gannon (L), Kim Potter (R)

Police officers often start out of a troubled sleep, only to awaken drenched in sweat, their hearts pounding out of their chests,glancing wildly about in a panic.  One of worst nightmares of that kind, something that haunts every competent cop, is accidentally shooting someone who should not have been shot.  Such is the reality of former Brooklyn Center, MN police officer, a 26-year female veteran, Kim Potter.  Fox News reports:

Potter, 48, is accused of fatally shooting Daunte Wright. Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon described the shooting as ‘an accidental discharge,’ and said she had meant to fire a Taser, not a handgun.

‘I’ll Tase you! I’ll Tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!” the officer is heard shouting on her bodycam footage released at a news conference. She draws her weapon after the man breaks free from police outside his car and gets back behind the wheel.

After firing a single shot from her handgun, the car speeds away, and the officer is heard saying, ‘Holy [shit]! I shot him.’

I could hear the horror and shock in her voice as she said that, and remembered all those sweat soaked nights.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office said in a statement that Wright died of a gunshot wound to the chest ‘and manner of death is homicide.’ [skip]

She is reportedly married, with two adult sons, and lives with her husband – who is also a police officer – in another Minneapolis suburb.

It remains unclear whether Potter has retained a lawyer [she has] who could speak on her behalf. Gannon said earlier that she had been placed on administrative leave.

From the moment of his death, the media has labored to portray Wright as a virtual saint, and of course, as another social justice martyr, brutally and purposely murdered because he was black.  Fox again:

Wright’s father, Aubrey, told the Washington Post that his son had just asked his mom for $50 for a carwash and was headed there when he was shot.

‘I know my son. He was scared. He still [had] the mind of a 17-year-old because we babied him,’ Wright told the outlet. ‘If he was resisting an arrest, you could Tase him. I don’t understand it.’

Aubrey said Daunte had a 2-year-old son and dropped out of high school two years ago because of a learning disability. Daunte has since worked in retail and fast-food restaurants to support his son and planned to get his GED, Aubrey told The Post.

‘He was a great kid,’ Aubrey Wright said. ‘He was a normal kid. He was never in serious trouble. He enjoyed spending time with his 2-year-old son. He loved his son.’

All people of good will pray for the comfort of Wright’s parents.  His death is—absent additional information to the contrary—a tragic accident.  However, Wright was anything but “a great kid,” and he was indeed in serious trouble, as I’ll explain shortly.

Being placed on administrative leave is normal procedure in such matters, and Potter resigned within hours, and so did Police Chief Tim Gannon.  Potter surely resigned for tactical, legal reasons, and to spare her fellow officers as much grief as possible.  Her family has been forced to abandon their home after its address was leaked, and are in hiding.  Gannon resigned because he knew he was going to be fired:

In addition to Potter, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott announced that Police Chief Tim Gannon resigned as well.

The mayor said the new police leadership was committed to working with community leaders and protesters, who say Wright was racially profiled.

‘We’re hoping that we’re turning over a new leaf now,” he said. “I’m confident of that now.’

He shouldn’t be.  Chief Gannon did his best to prevent the rioting and looting that continues as this is written.  At a news conference, reporters were desperate to portray the rioting and looting as the usual “peaceful protests.”  Gannon didn’t play along, which surely put him in local politician’s sights:

The media behaved as we have come to expect:

‘Just so everybody is clear, I was front and center at the protest, at the riot,’ Gannon said.

Before he could continue the press conference, Gannon faced disputes from multiple reporters who took issue with his use of the word ‘riot’ and demanded that he stop using it.

‘It was not a riot,’ one reporter shot back.

‘There was no riot,’ another reporter warned, joined by other members of the press who said, ‘don’t do that.’

Gannon quickly shut down the allegation from the media by explaining that multiple officers were ‘putting themselves in harm’s way’ as objects rained down on them.

In the current political climate, particularly in Minnesota, that was more than enough to doom Gannon.  But Gannon wasn’t the only local official doomed by telling the truth:

From Fox News:

‘All employees working for the city of Brooklyn Center are entitled to due process with respect to discipline,’ [soon to be fired City Manager Curt] Boganey said. ‘This employee [Potter, whose identity had not been revealed at that point] will receive due process and that’s really all that I can say today.’

When pressed on whether he personally felt the officer should be fired, Boganey again called for due process.

‘If I were to answer that question, I’d be contradicting what I said a moment ago — which is to say that all employees are entitled to due process and after that due process, discipline will be determined,’ Boganey said. ‘If I were to say anything else, I would actually be contradicting the idea of due process.’

But Mayor Mike Elliot disagreed saying that he thought the officer should be immediately fired. But because of the nature of the construct of their system, the decision on personnel fell to the city manager.

So Elliott relieved him of his duties and the city council voted to fire him during an emergency meeting. They also gave the mayor command authority over the police department.

Boganey and Elliot are both Black, which in a sane, color-blind society shouldn’t matter, but people like Elliott and Governor Tim Walz, make it matter.  Boganey made the mistake of daring to uphold the rule of law in a color-blind manner—Kim Potter is white.  For BLM activists and sympathizers, this is unforgivable, so he had to go.  Elliott is a Democrat, and the city council is Democrat dominated.

Who was Daunte Wright?  Was he the saintly martyr the media would have us believe?  Was he just like any other American youngster? Leave it to the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, rather than any US media propaganda organ, to provide the facts:

Daunte Wright choked a woman and threatened to shoot her if she did not hand over $820 she had stuffed in her bra, court papers obtained by DailyMail.com allege.

That is the case that led to a [felony] warrant for his arrest at the time he was shot and killed by police officer Kimberly Potter in Minnesota on Sunday, leading to days of unrest.

Wright was due to face trial on a charge of attempted aggravated robbery – with a possible maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Wright’s bail was originally set at $100,000 with orders that he should not contact the victim or any witnesses, refrain from drugs and alcohol and not have any weapons. A bond bailsman paid $40,000 for his release.

But his bail was revoked in July last year due to his ‘failure to not possess a firearm or ammunition’ and not keeping in touch with his probation officer, court papers show.

At that time a judge issued a warrant for his arrest, that was still outstanding on the day he died.

There is more, much more:

That’s not all that appears on Wright’s record. There was the February arrest for aggravated robbery. There was a disorderly conduct charge arising from a 2019 incident. There was the guilty plea in late 2019 to possession and sale of marijuana.

With that much of his record exposed, I’m sure there were many more misdemeanor arrests and convictions about which we’re unlikely to learn.  Clearly, Wright was a drug user and dealer, gangster/thug practitioner, and a violent criminal on his way to prison—or worse.

And of course, Attorney Benjamin Crump, who turns up whenever a black man is killed by the police or anyone else, knowing he’ll just have to race bait a bit and will be given an outlandish settlement by Democrat politicians only too glad to turn over millions of taxpayer dollars regardless of the facts, is already representing Wright’s parents, claiming Wright’s accidental death was a premeditated, racist murder.  There are few people more despicable than Crump in the practice of American law, though to be fair, he practices social justice, not actual justice.  It takes little legal talent to do that, and the rewards for little actual work are great.  There is no doubt Brooklyn Center is going to be forking over millions without any resistance.  The only question is how much and when?

Final Thoughts:

As usual, I’m working only with media reports.  I’ve seen the released body camera video, and equally as usual, if I’m wrong in any particular, I’ll promptly correct any errors.  That said, here’s what we reasonable know and can infer:

Unlike what Wright’s parents, with media help, have claimed, Wright was not stopped because he had an air freshener dangling from his rear view mirror, though under Minnesota law, that would have been a legitimate reason for a traffic stop.  His license plates were expired.

It is highly unlikely the officers knew he was black until they were close enough to the driver’s door window to actually see him.  This is the case in almost all traffic stops.  There is no evidence—at all—of racial profiling or racism in this tragic accident.

Some media accounts have suggested Potter was acting as a field training officer that day, which explains the actions of the young, Black police officer who apparently made the initial approach—he was likely driving and made the decision to stop Wright–and seemed not only unable to handcuff Wright, who at the moment, wasn’t actively resisting, but seemed entirely unsure what to do when Wright violently pulled free and leapt into the driver’s seat of his vehicle.

Potter seemed unnerved by what was happening.  It would not have been unreasonable for her to have feared Wright reentered the car to get to a weapon.  The video is sufficiently shaky and unclear that it’s not possible to see exactly what Potter saw and  could reasonably have believed.  It also appeared she might have been concerned for the safety of her young trainee, who continued to have no idea what he was doing.

From Potter’s commands and actions, there seems little doubt she thought she was holding a Taser rather than her Glock.  Some are suggesting since the two weapons are different in size and configuration, she should have known she was not holding the Taser merely by feel, but that’s an easy observation to make from the comfort of an armchair.  In real, potential dangerous confrontations, that kind of mistake is indeed possible, and just that sort of thing has happened in the past to other police officers.

Sadly, had Potter been accompanied by an experienced officer, he might have been able to see what she was doing and prevent the tragedy.

It is not “blaming the victim” to observe Wright would almost surely be alive today if he were not a drug using and dealing criminal and submitted to the entirely lawful arrest.  There is no doubt he knew of the warrant, and the potential jail sentence, which is surely why he attempted to flee.  In so doing, he endangered the girl in his vehicle, who did suffer reportedly minor injuries, and every other driver on the road that day.

And of course, D/S/C politicians–Tlaib is only one of a crowd–had to do additional damage to America, though more rational people didn’t let them get away with it:

This response to Tlaib is particularly appropriate:

It’s rather easy to demand Normal Americans be deprived of police protection while you’re trying to disarm them behind scores of armed police, disarmed soldiers, barriers and fences.  Of course, anti-American ideologues cannot be deterred:

This kind of rhetoric, and D/S/C politicians allowing BLM and Antifa to ravage their cities, also produces this kind of dangerous and destructive consequence:

Who in their right mind with the intelligence, qualifications and temperament is going to want to be a police officer in the future?  It doesn’t take psychic powers to predict a mass police exodus from Brooklyn Center in the very near future.

Kim Potter, who by all accounts is a solid, dedicated, career police officer, has already been arrested.  Mayor Elliott has also already asked Governor Walz to take the prosecution of Potter away from the local prosecutor and give it to racist Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office, with the help of a variety of leftist law firms, is persecuting former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin in the George Floyd case. 

All of this is reason for concern because it is simply not possible for the BCA to have completed a competent investigation in the very short time elapsed.  Once again, we have a white police officer treated very differently, due process arguably denied, because the “victim” was Black.

Without doubt, Duante Wright should not have been shot, but this was obviously a tragic accident, and under these circumstances, it would not have mattered if Wright were white or any other race.  His actions, his choices, in the past and in that moment, put him in danger.

Indeed, have pity on his parents and those that, despite his obvious character flaws, loved him.  Pray for his soul and for the comfort of his loved ones.  But pray too, and have sympathy, for Kim Potter, her husband and sons.  Her worst nightmare has happened.  In an instant, a lifetime of service has been wiped away.  We can be certain Ellison’s persecutors will be out for blood, and if Potter is not imprisoned for many years, it will be a miracle.

Keep in mind, gentle readers, that prison, for police officers, is a death sentence, and even more so these days.

Kim Potter’s life is essentially over, forever changed by the unintentional mistake of a moment.  Every police officer, if they have any introspection, knows that is always possible.  We should keep in mind, despite the ravings of corrupt politicians and equally corrupt media propagandists, that police officers have millions of contacts with citizens every year, and only a tiny portion of those contacts end in violence.  We should also keep in mind the idea that police are killing large numbers of black men, particularly “unarmed” black men, is a blatant, easily disproved lie.  

Kim Potter will face justice.  Let us ensure it is not social justice, for in a just system, her quarter century plus of honorable service must mitigate her sentence.  While any life unnecessarily lost is tragic, Duante Wright was not an innocent, and in considering a truly just sentence, that has to matter.  We can be reasonably certain no one, no system, can punish Kim Potter more severely than she is punishing herself.  Any police officer making that kind of mistake loses their career, and they must face the consequences.  Let us also pray she is not forced into prison, where her sentence will surely be death.  That, surely, would not be just.  That, surely, would compound a tragedy.