A police officer who fatally shot a man during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb on Tuesday resigned, as did the city’s police chief — moves that the mayor said he hoped would help heal the community and lead to reconciliation after two nights of protests and unrest.
However, police and protesters faced off once again after nightfall, with hundreds of protesters gathering again at Brooklyn Center’s heavily guarded police headquarters, now ringed by concrete barriers and a tall metal fence, and where police in riot gear and US National Guard soldiers stood watch.
“Murderapolis” was scrawled with black spray paint on a concrete barrier.
Photo: AFP
“Whose street? Our street,” the crowd chanted under a light snowfall.
About 90 minutes before the curfew, state police announced over a loudspeaker that the gathering had been declared unlawful and ordered the crowd to disperse.
That set off confrontations, with protesters launching fireworks toward the station and throwing objects at police, who launched flashbangs and gas grenades, and then marched in a line to force the crowd back.
“You are hereby ordered to disperse,” authorities announced, saying that anyone not leaving would be arrested.
State police said that the dispersal order came before the 10pm curfew because protesters were trying to take down the fencing and throwing rocks at police.
The number of protesters dropped rapidly over the next hour, until only a few remained.
Police also ordered all media to leave the scene.
The resignations from Brooklyn Center police chief Tim Gannon and officer Kim Potter came two days after the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in the city.
Potter, a 26-year veteran, had been on administrative leave following Sunday last week’s shooting, which happened as the Minneapolis area was already on edge over the trial of an officer charged in George Floyd’s death.
Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott told news conference that the city had been moving toward firing Potter when she resigned.
Elliott said he hoped her resignation would “bring some calm to the community,” but that he would keep working toward “full accountability under the law.”
“We have to make sure that justice is served, justice is done. Daunte Wright deserves that. His family deserves that,” Elliott said.
GEORGE FLOYD CASE
Meanwhile, The defense for former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with Floyd’s death, challenged the heart of the case, calling a use-of-force expert who testified that he was justified in pinning Floyd and said it might have gone easier if the man had been “resting comfortably” on the pavement.
Taking the stand at Chauvin’s murder trial, Barry Brodd, a former Santa Rosa, California, officer, stoutly defended Chauvin’s actions, even as a prosecutor pounded away at the witness, banging the lectern at one point during cross-examination and growing incredulous over Brodd’s use of the “resting comfortably” phrase.
“It’s easy to sit and judge ... an officer’s conduct,” Brodd said. “It’s more of a challenge to, again, put yourself in the officer’s shoes to try to make an evaluation through what they’re feeling, what they’re sensing, the fear they have, and then make a determination.”
He said he did not believe Chauvin and the other officers used deadly force when they held Floyd down on his stomach, his hands cuffed behind his back and Chauvin’s knee on his neck or neck area for what prosecutors say was nine-and-a-half minutes.
Brodd likened it instead to a situation in which officers use a Taser on someone fighting with them, and the suspect falls, hits his head and dies.
“That isn’t an incident of deadly force. That’s an incident of an accidental death,” he said.
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