https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/12/us/police-shooting-air-freshener-trnd/index.html
We’ll never know now, will we.
…which is why ordinary citizens on a jury need to start convicting these officers.
I am sure we will hear how hard the job is, how dangerous it is, and how we don’t understand.
And they’re probably right: we probably don’t know how dangerous it is. But so the fuck what? Police officers aren’t the only ones with dangerous jobs. Shit, being a cabbie, a construction worker, or an airline pilot is dangerous, and we don’t allow them to shoot people. We just assume that cops should be armed to the teeth, that simply talking back to them represents a potential threat, and that police aren’t in a position to take any chances.
No, fuck that – police officers are in a position to take chances, and if they can’t live with that…then don’t do the fucking job.
I agree.
I have friends who are sheriff’s deputies and police sergeants. They’re good people, but I still feel an “us against them” vibe when they describe some of their arrests. It makes me feel uneasy.
LE culture needs to change in this country. For starters, I would prohibit any former military member from becoming an LEO. And I say this as a big supporter of our military members.
There is one thing and one thing only that will change right now: convictions and hard time in prison. That is it. That’s what’s riding on the outcome of cases like Chauvin’s and others.
The Guardian is reporting that both the officer who shot Daunte Wright and the Chief of Police have resigned.
I agree with Trevor Noah: maybe if officers would just be trained to, I don’t know, think things through before pulling anything out of their holster…maybe ‘accidents’ like this wouldn’t happen?
It’s the mindset that their authority is beyond question in these situations that they need to be trained out of. If, as in the case of Daunte Wright and Jacob Blake, they were trained to diffuse rather than escalate in order to accomplish the objective of detaining the subject, the results would be better for everyone concerned.
My understanding is that the military generally has a better ‘de-escalation’ culture regarding interactions than the police do.
Not defending the officer’s mistake - she deserves jail time - but in this case, there wasn’t much time to think. Wright had managed to get back in the car, and the officers knew the next step was either a dangerous high-speed chase, or possibly Wright pulling a gun out of somewhere in the car and starting a pointblank firefight. It all goes down in seconds, leaving the officer scant time to double-check what she’s holding.
Maybe there needs to be a bigger difference in the look and feel of a tazer and a handgun?
She was also the local police union president.
I just read on Twitter this morning, and I can’t find it now, that there was a warrant out for Daunte Wright’s arrest because the court had sent a notice to appear to the wrong address, so, when naturally, he didn’t show up, they issued a warrant. Would that not imply that the cops’ claim that he was fleeing because he had a warrant was a lie, since he didn’t know he had a warrant?
Perp? What was he perpetrating?
He didn’t show up because the court sent the notice to appear to the wrong address.
He stole a bullet.
More is being released about the reason he was stopped. Apparently it wasn’t the air freshener but expired tags that first flagged the police to pull him over. The air freshener was noticed later. The gun misdemeanor warrant and the fact that he ran from police last June was discovered in the process as well, which is what led to the attempt to arrest him. I have not seen any corroboration to the ‘sent to the wrong address’ . Story here:
You think they would have known that sooner…
…wat?
There are two cases against Daunte Wright listed in the Minnesota Judicial Branch website. I can’t link directly to each case, as you have to go to the search page and plug the case numbers in yourself.
The two case numbers are:
27-CR-19-29850
27-CR-21-4400
The first case, in its most recent entry, shows a piece of Returned Mail. The post office has stamped on it:
RETURN TO SENDER
NO SUCH NUMBER
UNABLE TO FORWARD
I have uploaded a copy of the returned mail to my Google Drive.
It is not clear whether or not they actually sent the letter to the wrong address. The letter appears to have been sent to the address that is listed for Wright on all of his court paperwork:
5155 Dupont Avenue N.
Minneapolis, MN 55430
This address does actually exist (found it on Google Maps), but I don’t know if Wright was living there at the time of his death.
This first case, however, does NOT appear to be the case for which the warrant was issued. There is no warrant listed in the documentation for the first case. The warrant was issued in the second case, on April 2 of this year. Here is the warrant. The second case does not show any returned mail.
I’m not sure what any of this means, in terms of the events of Sunday afternoon. I think it would probably behoove us all to wait for a bit more information.
This was the defense of the BART cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland some 12 or so years ago. He was convicted under California law of involuntary manslaughter.
Every uniform cop I know/see carry the Taser on the non-dominant side of their belt. Seems like a basic safety issue if she wore them both on the same side, and close enough to each other that such a mistake could be made under pressure.