Pictured are former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter and twenty-year-old Daunte WrightClevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, associate publisher: BROOKLYN CENTER, Minnesota- A White Minnesota cop who admitted gunning down 20-year old Daute Wright during a traffic stop Sunday afternoon in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center and later quit the force has been charged with second degree manslaughter in the young Black man's death.
Kim Potter, 48 and a 26-year veteran with the Brooklyn Center police department before she quit the post, appeared in court yesterday in an orange jail jump suit.
She posted 10 percent of a $100,000 bond and is free on bail.
Wright's killing comes as the prosecution rest in the George Floyd murder trial and the defense begins presenting its case in a courtroom in Minneapolis just 10 miles down the road from Brooklyn Center, a small inner-ring suburb with a population of some 30,000 people.
Protesters, young and old alike, have marched through the city of Brooklyn Center demanding justice for Wright since the killing occurred earlier this week.
The protesting began Sunday night where protesters quarreled with police and broke into some 20 local businesses, and continued through Wednesday night with several protesters arrested Tuesday night for refusing police orders to disassemble.
Police shot off tear gas during a contentious protest on Monday night.
Tuesday night's protest was even more contentious as protesters threw water bottle and rocks at police.
Police shot off rubber bullets, and some of them even shoved protesters.
Wednesday's protest was less confrontational.
A fence has been put up around the Brooklyn Center police building where protesters have been gathering all week.
A nightly curfew is also in order, and the state patrol and Minnesota National Guard remain on guard and fear potential riots, sources say, like those that erupted locally and nationwide in the aftermath of Floyd's death in May of last year.
Potter and her police chief, Tim Gannon, both resigned on Monday after the then chief said publicly that the dash cam killing of Wright was in his view an accidental shooting death.
The former chief said the officer mistakenly pulled her gun, and not her taser, a statement that angered Black Civil Rights leaders protesters and Wright family attorneys, who joined with Floyd's family members for a press conference against the police chief.
About 500 protesters, most of them young and many of them White, confronted police during the height of the four-night racial unrest.
Wright's killing by Brooklyn Center police only exasperated the tensions still brewing between police and the Black community as the defense is now putting on its case in the trial of the former Minneapolis cop who killed Floyd, a 46-year-old father of two.
A veteran White cop with a personnel file of some 17 complaints before he was fired, Derek Chauvin, 45, killed Floyd on May 25 following an arrest for alleged forgery, and as bystanders looked on in dismay, some pleading for him to stop.
He faces charges of second degree intentional murder, third degree murder, and second degree manslaughter as the country awaits a subsequent jury verdict in the controversial excessive force case.
Three other Minneapolis police officers at the scene who did nothing while Chauvin held his knee on the neck of the handcuffed Floyd for more than nine minutes until he killed him were also fired and await trial on lesser charges
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.
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