none of this crap is going to work The only real solution of policing humans is by non humans, AI drones, armed robots @Xerobull They made a Will Smith movie about this
Noor was black, muslim, and shot a white women and he got 12 years. If he was white and he shot black teenager he would probably have got 6 months.
it was the early 2000's and i still had a cassette player in my car. you might be onto something there.
Yeah I noticed that he was trying to cuff him with the door wide open. That has to against any number of protocols.
I haven't been able to follow this trial that close and am surprised there isn't any recent discussion on it here. It was dominating the news coverage in MN the last week and this is going to be an interesting verdict. Like the Rittenhouse case the prosecution has been burned by some of their own witnesses. Some of the other LEO have stood up for Potter including her superior meanwhile previously unreleased body cam footage shows Potter breaking down following the shooting. Potter herself broke down on the stand. There is some speculation that she is copying Rittenhouse. One interesting angle the defense has brought up is that even though she intended to use her taser that deadly force was justified so even though she made a mistake with what weapon she had the end result was still justified if accidental. The prosecution's strongest argument still remains that a taser is very different from her firearm and that throughout her 26 year career she has kept her taser on the other side of her hip from her firearm and she has been certified multiple times in both. Also that she herself believed that she had her taser in her hand when she shot Daunte Wright. Coming into this trial I was pretty sure she would get convicted based upon what happened to LEO Noor who tried to argue also that he made an honest mistake. From what I've seen of the trial I think it's a coin flip whether she get's convicted or not. If she is acquitted I hope that with Christmas a few days from now and that it get's really cold or a big snowstorm happens. This could get very ugly again for the Twin Cities.
Lol. I ****ing called it. Provided the prosecution didn't wildly overreach on charges (2nd degree manslaughter seems reasonable, although one could argue for 1st degree) she will be found guilty. The question is more about the sentencing than the verdict.
The problem in the charges is that the word "consciously" is used. The jury instructions will be key. Here is the 2nd degree manslaughter definition in MN law (1) by the person's culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another; or
If I remember correctly that was one of the charges Noor was convicted of. He was also convicted of third degree nursery which was dropped this past year. Obviously Noor was a black officer who shot a white woman and he clearly intended to use lethal force when he drew his firearm when they entered the alley.
Manslaughter 1st degree while committing a misdemeanor: Guilty Manslaughter 2nd degree, culpable negligence: Guilty
I'm glad they are making bad cops accountable. Cops are necessary. Putting up with shitty cops isn't necessary.
I haven't been able to follow this closely from overseas but the verdict sounds correct and glad that the jury took their time. Great job by the prosecution on rebutting the arguments made by the defense. Going into deliberations I wasn't sure how they were going to rule as it seemed like the prosecution had made some early mistakes but came back well. Also this is another sign that the days of getting deference to LE from both prosecution and juries might be on it's way out. I understand how LEO will likely feel this will make their jobs much harder but the nature of the job demands accountability. LEO who make deadly mistakes are a threat to everyone's safety and not being able to distinguish between a taser and a firearm is a very big mistake. Potter knew it herself and one reason why she reacted the way she did. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/12/23/kimberly-potter-trial-jury-decision Jury finds Potter guilty of manslaughter in Daunte Wright killing Jon Collins, Nina Moini and Matt Sepic Minneapolis December 23, 2021 12:25 p.m. Updated 4 p.m. A Hennepin County jury on Thursday found ex-Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter guilty of first- and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 traffic stop killing of Daunte Wright. Judge Regina Chu turned aside defense requests to allow Potter to be free on bail until sentencing, expected Feb. 18. “I am going to require that she be taken into custody and held without bail,” Chu told the court. “I cannot treat this case any differently than any other case.” Potter, who’d listened calmly as the verdicts were read aloud, was led out of the court in handcuffs. “We have a degree of accountability for Daunte’s death,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said later. “Accountability is not justice. Justice would be restoring Daunte to life and making the Wright family whole again. But accountability is an important step,” said Ellison, whose office prosecuted Potter. Ellison urged law enforcement not to be discouraged by the verdicts. “When a member of your profession is held accountable, it does not diminish you. It shows that those of you who enforce the law are also willing to live by it, and that’s a good thing.” Potter is the first female police officer to be found guilty for an on-duty killing since at least 2005, according to Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Stinson doesn't have records from before that, but it's likely it hasn't happened before in the United States. Potter faces about seven years in prison on the most serious count under the state’s sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors said they would seek a longer term. Under state law, defendants are sentenced only on the most serious conviction if multiple counts involve the same act and the same victim. Presuming good behavior, offenders typically serve two-thirds of their time in prison and one-third on supervised release. ‘Taser! Taser! Taser!’ Wright’s fatal police encounter began as a routine Sunday afternoon traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb. Potter and the officer she was training pulled Wright’s car over for an air freshener hanging from his car's rearview mirror and for expired license plate tabs. A third officer also arrived on the scene. Running a background check, they found Wright, 20, had an outstanding warrant for failure to appear on a gross misdemeanor weapons violation. As he stood outside the car, the officers told Wright he was under arrest. As they began to handcuff him, Wright slipped away and jumped back into the driver’s seat. On police camera video, Potter can be heard telling Wright “I’ll tase ya” while holding her 9 mm handgun in her right hand and pointing it at Wright as officers try to keep Wright from driving away. She yells “Taser! Taser! Taser!” just before firing a single bullet into Wright’s chest; he drove off but crashed shortly after. Potter, 49, is heard saying on the video. “I grabbed the wrong (expletive) gun … I’m going to go to prison.” Potter later told investigators she had intended to draw her Taser to subdue Wright but unintentionally drew her service weapon. She was charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. As with the Chauvin case, the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took over the prosecution. Wright’s killing set off days of protests and property destruction in the Twin Cities suburb. It came during the trial of Chauvin, who’d been charged with killing George Floyd while in police custody. Potter’s prosecutors never characterized Wright's killing as racially motivated, but civil rights advocates around the case pointed to a long history of officers not being held accountable when they kill unarmed Black people. Potter is white. Wright was Black. Nine of the twelve jurors who decided Potter’s fate were white. One juror identified as Black; two identified as being of Asian descent. Six were men, six were women. Jurors deliberated 28 hours over four days — longer than in the trials of ex-Minneapolis police officers Derek Chauvin and Mohamed Noor. Both were convicted for unlawfully killing people while on duty. By contrast, a jury went five days before acquitting ex-St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez in 2017 in the killing of motorist Philando Castile.
Here is perspective from one of the jurors. https://www.kare11.com/article/news...s-out/89-7fd1ff32-1464-4333-8255-568c304dfdd6
"Now that I'm free to use the internet, I'm seeing comments suggesting these jurors need to be executed and stuff like that. It's wild. The internet is a dark place." the good news is that nobody takes DaDakota seriously
100% support law enforcement... its a thankless job that keeps us all safe. I also believe that the job requires a higher responsibility that law enforcement officers act responsibly to keep the community safe. I also believe they need to act in a way to keep the trust of the community they protect. That's why instances of inappropriate, irresponsible and even criminal behavior has to be investigated and addressed. Netflix has a great documentary called 137 Shots. The title refers to the number of shots taken by police officers into a car with two people in it. Its a complicated story involving two people pulled over by one police officer (not involved in the shooting), after they left that cop they proceeded at a high speed (the belief was the driver was trying to get the passenger away from the first police officer) passing another police officer that misheard the car's backfire as a gun shot. That led to a high speed chase involving 60 police officer. When the car stopped the police officers surrounded the car. Still under the mistaken belief that someone in the car had shot a gun, the police started shooting into the car, and since the officer surrounded the car, some of the police officers shots were mistaken to have been coming from the car, so they continued to shoot into the car. One officer jumped onto the hood of the car and shot the driver and passenger 30 additional times from point blank. No guns were ever found. Complicated investigation and legal proceedings ensued (better to watch the documentary) but the key takeaways was that the police officers were coached to say they believed their livers were in danger and they were scared to death. Eventually only one officer (the one that jumped on the hood) was charged with a crime, no conviction, and while a handful were originally fired for the shooting all but the officer on the hood got their jobs back.
I'm already seeing some anger about the sentence and wouldn't be surprised if there are protests tonight and tomorrow. It's 15F but it is also really windy here so that might keep down the protests. My own feeling is that while I'm not sure that Potter deserved the harshest sentence this is too light. Whether Potter intended to kill Wright or not this was a serious negligence. It wasn't what Judge Chu stated a split second decision as Potter had her firearm in her hand for about two minutes. There was plenty of time to realize she wasn't holding her taser. Daunte Wright was no saint and if he lived should've been tried for his crimes but an LEO that can't tell what weapon she's holding is a threat to everyone.