Brooklyn Center residents are confused about how to express their anger and dismay. Then, in chorus, in the freezing rain, a few hundred of them chanted, at regular intervals, the name of Daunte Wright. Gathered for the third consecutive evening in front of the police station of this charmless suburb of Minneapolis (Minnesota), Tuesday, April 13, the crowd, juvenile and mixed, thus pays tribute to the young African-American of 20 years killed by the shooting of a policewoman during a roadside check on Sunday.
His photo, of a teenage face just emerging from childhood wearing a large red cap, is brandished at arm’s length in front of the building, protected by concrete blocks, fences and duly National Guard soldiers. armed. The previous days, clashes erupted, spilling over into the surrounding streets and some neighborhood businesses, now locked behind plywood. On Tuesday, a few dozen people still clashed with the police just before the curfew.
Earlier in the evening, surgical mask on her face, Carolina Montenegro, a 21-year-old mother, did not hide her anger: “How can we say that Daunte’s death is ‘an accident’? If the police had arrested a white woman, it would never have happened like this. ” Kimberly Potter, the policewoman who, with two of her colleagues, carried out the identity check of the young man, claimed to have confused her handgun with her Taser. When the blow went off, hitting the driver in the chest, in front of her friend, the 46-year-old senior civil servant cursed and immediately recognized: “I shot him! ” She resigned on Tuesday, as did the city’s police chief.
Expeditious decision
This hasty decision, suggested the day before by the mayor, of Liberian origin, of Brooklyn Center, Mike Elliott, is not enough for the demonstrators and the family of the young man. At the microphone, activists demand equal justice for “Whites and blacks”. “Throw her in jail like you would for us”, also launched, earlier in the day, the aunt of the young deceased, Naisha Wright, during a press conference held in front of the court of Minneapolis, in company of the lawyer Ben Crump. The latter represents many African-American families victims of police violence, in particular the family of George Floyd, who died in May 2020 under the knee of the police officer Derek Chauvin and whose trial has been held for three weeks in the city center.
You have 54.01% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
