Former police officer Kimberly Potter has been sentenced to two years in prison by a judge in the US state of Minnesota. In April, she shot and killed Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb. The 20-year-old black man resisted a traffic stop.
The sentence is less than the more than seven years demanded by the prosecutors. The judge decided that a milder punishment appropriate, because she is convinced that Potter wanted to use her electroshock weapon instead of her pistol.
Wright was asked to pull over after a traffic stop. He was subsequently arrested because there was an arrest warrant against him. When he resisted, the 49-year-old Potter said he grabbed her electroshock weapon, but used her service pistol.
The fatal arrest was captured by Potter’s body cam. It took the jury three days to reach a decision. Potter was found guilty of manslaughter.
George Floyd
Wright’s death sparked violent protests in the Brooklyn Center suburb. He was shot dead while Minneapolis was already unsettled. Former agent Derek Chauvin was on trial at the time for killing George Floyd in May 2020, the case that gave major impetus to the Black Lives Matter movement.
In June Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. Potter’s conviction is now the second in a year for the killing of a black American by a cop.
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