Kimberly Potter verdict

12.23.2021

I’m angry. It might have started when my dog chewed up my leather couch. But then I read that today former MN police officer Kimberly Potter was convicted of both first and second degree manslaughter in the killing of 20 year-old Daunte Wright. People are celebrating, but nobody won here. A young man still too young to buy beer is still dead. Forever. His family will be in pain. Forever. A child will be without his natural father. Forever. And a mother will forever never forget seeing on a cell phone her son bleeding out and dying.

The verdict didn’t even bring justice. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office led the prosecution, described the verdict as “A measure of accountability, but said it was not justice. Justice would be restoring Daunte to life and making the Wright family whole again.”

A decent-seeming woman in an honorable profession - who had never drawn her gun in 26 years as a cop - is headed to prison, likely for many years, potentially up to 25. Her family is in pain. Neither her life nor theirs will ever again be the same. Laughter, hugs, and that second paycheck will be hard to come by. Forever.

Potter should pay a price for the mistake that she made. Her smarmy defense attorney, Earl Gray – yes, like the tea – said to the jury, “This lady here made a mistake. And my gosh, a mistake is not a crime.” Well, actually, Earl, it is. By law. It’s a mistake AND a crime when a drunk gets behind the wheel of a vehicle and kills somebody.

I know cops who carry their taser on their off-side, set up for an off-side draw. So muscle memory lets them know for sure that if something is in their on-side hand, it’s a gun. They opt to carry that way to avoid the exact mistake that Kimberly Potter made. Hard to fathom why that’s not universal standard operating procedure.

The city of Brooklyn Center will undoubtedly pay millions of dollars to Daunte’s family which will do nothing to ease their pain, but will likely cause pain for whatever that money will now not provide for the citizens of Brooklyn Center. No winners there either.

And maybe most importantly, nothing will change between law enforcement and Black America.

Nothing to see here folks and dammed sure nothing to celebrate.

But here’s the thing that is pissing me off. NONE of this had to happen. For 402 years, America has made Black Americans the boogie man. Government required redlining left Black Americans unable to buy the primary asset that allowed other Americans access to the middle class and a positive net worth. Unable to own a home, or even to rent wherever they wanted, Black Americans were consigned to ghettos that the local governments and banks intentionally let deteriorate and turned into slums. Richard Nixon joyfully coined a term for this intentional practice, “Benign neglect”.  And then white folks said, “Look at the way those people live. Look at what they do to their neighborhoods.”

Black Americans became rough around the edges. Poverty does that. And then America’s ‘War On Drugs’ portrayed us as what Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton referred to as ,”Super Predators”. The campaign was so successful that polls from not long ago indicated that some 40% of Black Americans thought unfavorably of Black Americans.

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or (to be) Black, but by getting the public to associate…Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing (that) heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” John Ehrlichman, key Watergate operative and advisor to President Richard Nixon

America, by design, policy, and custom kept Black Americans in poverty and portrayed us as dangerous. Was Kimberly Potter afraid of Daunte Wright? America had conditioned her to be afraid of Black men. It’s not racism that has law enforcement killing so many Black Americans. It’s fear. Fear created by racism.

So yeah, I’m angry. I’m angry at my country. Again. The one that I fought a war for. Daunte is still dead, and America is still a mess. NONE of this had to happen. Daunte didn’t need to die for a damned air freshener hanging from his mirror.

I’m often asked to write or comment about American law enforcement. I’ve started to a couple of times, but I’ve backed out because I just don’t know what to say. But Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director Counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund is way smarter than I, eloquent, balanced, and insightful in discussing American law enforcement and how racism threatens our democracy. You can listen to her here. I recommend it.

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I’m tired. Good night.