Riots have broken out in Minnesota after a police involved shooting that turned out to have been an accidental discharge. Yahoo News. A 20 year old man, Daunte Wright, with warrants out for his arrest was pulled over by police in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb. Wright resisted arrest and jumped into his car when a female police officer fired her gun at him. The bodycam footage shows her yelling "Taser" and after shooting him she sound incredulous saying "Oh shit, I just shot him?" With the video evidence, police believe the shooting was accidental. The news about the shooting broke today but that did not stop riots from happening in Minnesota.
My Comment:
What a mess. It seems as though this is one of the cases where just about everyone screwed up. The police officer involved somehow managed to draw her service weapon instead of her taser, which is a huge mistake, but one that has happened in the past. Daunte Wright resisted arrest and had a warrant out for him, so he's no innocent victim either. And worst of all people rioted for no reason as this was obviously not an act of racism in any way shape or form.
There have been other cases where police have shot someone because they didn't realize they had a gun instead of a taser. It's seems incredible to not be able to tell the difference between a taser and a gun but it happens. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug and it affects your judgement and this officer obviously made the wrong call. This is not an unprecedented incident unfortunately.
I don't think there is any way to argue that this officer did this on purpose. Having watched the video it seems she is surprised as anyone else that she fired her gun. This was a tragic mistake, not an intentional homicide. And it's not entirely clear if Wright died from the bullet or from the car crash he was involved in after fleeing (though the autopsy should make that clear soon enough).
There was no justification for riots though. There wouldn't have been a justification for riots if the police had drawn and quartered Daunte Wright. Rioting is never ok and is always just an excuse for looting and destruction. I have no sympathy for Black Lives Matter's arguments in this case, the incident was clearly not racist in any way.
I also don't have much in the way of sympathy for Daunte Wright. Though the officer involved in the shooting screwed up and screwed up badly that doesn't excuse him fighting with the police and trying to flee. Had he simply cooperated he'd be alive in jail right now instead of being dead. I just can't feel any sympathy for a criminal who gets killed by the police, even in an unjust way. If you choose a lifestyle of crime chances are you will end up killed by someone so it's not like this was an unexpected outcome.
What do I think should happen to the officer that shot Wright? At bare minimum she should be fired. I also think she should be charged with whatever Minnesota's equivalent of manslaughter or reckless homicide is. Though the incident was clearly a mistake it's not something that should be let go without some kind of punishment. That being said, she still deserves a day in court and given how often evidence pops up that changes the context of these cases I will reserve judgement on whether she should be convicted until later.
I don't really think there is an argument for justification here. Firing a taser might have been justified but firing a gun was not. Wright was trying to flee which is a danger but he hadn't done anything that put anyone's life at risk. And he only drove off after he got shot, which seems almost reasonable at that point.
I do think this incident exposes one of the actual problems with America's police forces. They are often underfunded and undertrained. It's clear that this officer needed more training with her weapons as I don't think this is a problem that a well trained officer would have faced. I also think that hiring standards in these big cities are too loose. Nobody wanted to work in the big cities even before Black Lives Matter showed up. Now it's hard to get anyone decent to work in big inner city police departments. Without knowing who this officer is it's only speculation, but it's also possible she wasn't really qualified for her job and was hired for the sake of "diversity". There are plenty of women cops who are good at their jobs and are worthy of being hired but this officer might not have been one of them.
This is why it was so frustrating to see "Defund the Police" trending yesterday on Twitter. Defunding the police is why this happened in the first place! Well trained, well paid and well screened cops almost never make mistakes like this and by cutting funding you are essentially ensuring that this kind of incident happens more often. Though that seems to be the goal of these racial fraudsters, they want racial division and they don't care if people die in order to get it.
As for the riots I think they were inevitable. If it wasn't for this shooting it would have been from the Derek Chauvin trial, which seems likely to end in an acquittal. And even if that didn't set things off, sooner or later another criminal would be shot and the cycle would begin again. The problem is the news coverage of these events, racial hucksters like Benjamin Crump and the fact that the riots last year did not end with police and the national guard coming down on the rioters like the hand of God.
It will be interesting to see how Joe Biden handles this. The general consensus is that blue state governors and mayors let the riots happen in 2020 to hurt President Donald Trump. In theory they should now crack down as it would hurt Biden if they didn't. But on the other hand the Democrats are almost completely unable to stand up to their African American supporters even when they are clearly in the wrong. As much as I despise Biden I do hope that he does crack down on these rioters as I have no desire to see America's cities burn yet again.
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