“I’ll Tase you! I’ll Tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!” she can be heard saying. 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.”
Brooklyn Centre Mayor Mike Elliott called the shooting “deeply tragic” and said the officer should be fired.
“We’re going to do everything we can to ensure that justice is done and our communities are made whole,” he said.
Elliott later announced the city council had voted to give his office “command authority” over the police department.
This “will streamline things and establish a chain of command and leadership,” he wrote on Twitter. He also said the city manager had been fired,and that the deputy city manager would take over his duties.
The reason behind the firing was not immediately clear,but the city manager controls the police department,according to the city’s charter. Now-former city manager Curt Boganey,speaking earlier to reporters,said the officer who shot Wright would get “due process” after the shooting.
Brooklyn Centre is a modest suburb just north of Minneapolis that has seen its demographics shift dramatically in recent years. In 2000,more than 70 per cent of the city was white. Today,a majority of residents are black,Asian or Latino.
Members of the National Guard stand watch as protesters leave the Brooklyn Centre Police station on Sunday.Credit:AP
Organisers from the Movement for Black Lives,a national coalition of more than 150 black-led political and advocacy groups,pointed to Wright’s killing as yet another reason why cities must take up proposals for defunding an “irreparably broken,racist system”.
“The fact that police killed him just miles from where they murdered George Floyd last year is a slap in the face to an entire community,” said Karissa Lewis,the coalition’s national field director.
The bodycam footage showed three officers around a stopped car,which authorities said was pulled over because it had expired registration tags. When another officer attempts to handcuff Wright,a second officer tells him he’s being arrested on a warrant. That’s when the struggle begins,followed by the shooting. Then the car travels several blocks before striking another vehicle.
Gannon said he believed the officer had intended to use her Taser,but instead fired one bullet at Wright. From “what I viewed and the officer’s reaction in distress immediately after that this was an accidental discharge that resulted in the tragic death of Mr Wright.”
Protesters confronts with police in front of the Brooklyn Centre Police station on Sunday.Credit:AP
Wright died of a gunshot wound to the chest,the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office said in a statement.
The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,which is investigating the shooting,identified the officer as Kim Potter,a 26-year veteran who has been placed on administrative leave.
Gannon would not say whether she would be fired.
“I think we can watch the video and ascertain whether she will be returning,” the chief said.
Court records show Wright was being sought after failing to appear in court on charges that he fled from officers and possessed a gun without a permit during an encounter with Minneapolis police in June.
Wright’s mother,Katie Wright,said her son called her as he was getting pulled over.
Friends and family comfort Katie Wright,right,near the scene of her son’s fatal shooting.Credit:Star Tribune/AP
During the call,she said she heard scuffling and then someone saying “Daunte,don’t run” before the call ended. When she called back,her son’s girlfriend answered and said he had been shot.
His brother,Dallas Bryant,told about a hundred people gathered for a candlelight vigil that Wright sounded scared during the phone call,and questioned how the officer could mistake a gun for a Taser.
“You know the difference between plastic and metal. We all know it,” he said.
Demonstrators began to gather shortly after the shooting on Sunday (Monday AEST),with some jumping atop police cars. Marchers also descended on the city’s police headquarters,throwing rocks and other objects. About 20 businesses were broken into at the city’s Shingle Creek shopping centre,authorities said.
Images of looters entering and exiting a local retail store were broadcast on MSNBC.
US President Joe Biden called Wright’s death “tragic” and called for peace.
Protesters jump on police vehicles near the site of a shooting involving a police officer in the city of Brooklyn Center,Minnesota.Credit:AP
“There is absolutely no justification,none,for looting,” Biden said. “No justification for violence.”
Speaking before the unrest Katie Wright urged protesters to stay peaceful and focused on the loss of her son.
“All the violence,if it keeps going,it’s only going to be about the violence. We need it to be about why my son got shot for no reason,” she said to a crowd near the shooting scene. “We need to make sure it’s about him and not about smashing police cars,because that’s not going to bring my son back.”
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The trial of Derek Chauvin,the former Minneapolis officer charged in Floyd’s death,continues. Floyd,a black man,died May 25 after Chauvin,who is white,pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck. Prosecutors say Floyd was pinned for 9 minutes,29 seconds. The judge in that case refused to sequester the jury after a defence attorney argued that the panel could be influenced by the prospect of what might happen as a result of their verdict.
AP