Officer Held Accountable for Fatal Shooting of Daunte Wright
Today, a jury found Kim Potter guilty of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright. After the verdict was announced, Giffords Executive Director Peter Ambler and Giffords Law Center Executive Director Robyn Thomas issued the following statement:
“No verdict will bring back Daunte Wright, but today the officer who shot and killed him was held accountable. At just 20 years old, Daunte had his whole life ahead of him when a routine traffic stop turned deadly—as is tragically far too common for people of color in this country. Law enforcement disproportionately uses lethal force against Black and Brown Americans, which erodes trust in the officers tasked with keeping these communities safe and leads to higher rates of gun violence. As part of solving America’s gun violence crisis, it is critically important for us to address police violence and the lack of police-community trust.
“Daunte’s family should be preparing to celebrate the holiday season with him. Instead, they are grieving his loss. We must continue to fight for reforms of policing and our criminal legal system until Black and Brown Americans no longer live in fear of being harmed by police.”
“Daunte’s family should be preparing to celebrate the holiday season with him. Instead, they are grieving his loss. We must continue to fight for reforms of policing and our criminal legal system until Black and Brown Americans no longer live in fear of being harmed by police.”
For more on how high-profile incidents of police violence lead to plummeting trust in law enforcement and cycles of community violence, read Giffords Law Center’s 2020 report, In Pursuit of Peace: Building Police-Community Trust to Break the Cycle of Violence.
POLICE VIOLENCE IS GUN VIOLENCE
We’ve signed on to a letter from the Community Justice Action Fund to demand accountability and stand in support of anti-racist action.
