“Shit! I shot him.”

Bodycam footage has been released on the police shooting last night in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Three police officers, one black man, one white man and one woman, stopped a vehicle being driven by 20-year-old Daunte Wright. Wright was wanted on an arrest warrant.

Initially Wright got out of his car, but then apparently changed his mind, fought with police officers, climbed back into his car and drove away. As the officers were struggling with Wright, the police woman attempted to tase him. Evidently she accidentally pulled out her gun rather than her taser and shot Wright with it. I believe the Brooklyn Center Police Department has already fired her, or announced its intention to do so.


Wright had been charged with illegally carrying a weapon and with, on that occasion also, fleeing a police officer. He failed to appear for a hearing on April 2.


As shown in photos tweeted above by Andy Ngo, Wright’s Facebook page features a gun, wads of cash, gang signs and what looks like a joint.

This case is somewhat reminiscent of Mohammed Noor’s shooting of Justine Damond in Minneapolis a few years ago. That incident, too, involved almost incredible negligence on the part of the police officer. The difference, of course, is that Damond did nothing whatsoever wrong. Having called 911, she approached the squad car that responded to her call on the driver’s side and Noor, for no discernible reason, pulled his gun and shot her, firing across his partner’s body. In the current case, Wright was resisting arrest and attempting to flee. It was the confusion caused by his struggle that led to the police woman’s fatal error.

Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz must be the most irresponsible governor in the U.S. Before anything was known about the circumstances of last night’s incident, Walz was already making it about race:


It doesn’t appear that there was any racial angle in last night’s fatal encounter at all.

A final observation: At this moment, Governor Walz and others are giving a press conference on last night’s shooting. They recited a list of victims of police shootings, but never mentioned Justine Damond–the one case that is actually analogous.

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