Column: Daunte Wright was unarmed. Wouldn’t letting him go have been better than killing him?
“Oh, (expletive), I shot him.”
You’ll hear those words if you watch the body camera video of a suburban Minneapolis police officer shooting and killing an unarmed 20-year-old Black man during a traffic stop.
Moments before that, the officer can be heard shouting, “Taser! Taser! Taser!” Then she shoots. Then she realizes, apparently, that she fired her gun and not her Taser. And soon Daunte Wright is dead, the latest Black man to die at the hands of police.
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Questions swirled after the Brooklyn Center Police Department released the body camera footage Monday. How could an officer mistake a Taser for a gun? Will she be fired?
As this all unfolded, the trial of the Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes last summer, killing him, continued. And questions swirled in that trial as well.
Why didn’t former Officer Derek Chauvin recognize he was killing Floyd? Why didn’t the officers around him intervene?
But there’s one question about Wright’s death, and about Floyd’s death, and about those of a long and growing list of Black people killed by armed police officers, that’s rarely asked and never answered: What’s the worst that would have happened if deadly force wasn’t used?
In Brooklyn Center, what’s the worst that would have happened if that officer had kept her weapon holstered? Wright was unarmed. He had been pulled over for a traffic violation and police found he had an outstanding warrant, so they were going to arrest him.
In the body camera video, it appears he tries to get away from the police and get back in his vehicle when the officer shouts, “Taser! Taser! Taser!” The she shoots what turned out to be her gun. And then she says, “Oh, (expletive), I shot him.”
And Wright is dead. Oh, (expletive), indeed.
Why was a Taser even necessary in that situation? Why even introduce that level of force during a traffic stop?
The same can be asked of the arrest of George Floyd. Floyd was unarmed, subdued and outnumbered. Yet Chauvin felt it necessary to keep a knee on his neck for more than nine minutes?
What’s the worst that would have happened if Floyd somehow got up and ran off? Is that scenario somehow worse than Floyd getting killed flat on his face on the street?
I can already hear people shouting, “Well if a person just complies with the police …” That’s an easy point to make if you don’t routinely see body camera videos of unarmed people who look like you getting killed by police. Otherwise you might have a very different take on interactions with law enforcement.
And regardless, nothing Wright did and nothing Floyd did merited execution without trial. Each man was unarmed, each man was Black and each man was killed.
That merits a good bit more than an, “Oh, (expletive).”
If we’re going to have cops claiming they mistook their Taser for a gun, perhaps some cops should only have Tasers. And if some cops can’t recognize situations where letting a person get away might be preferable to shooting and killing that person, maybe they shouldn’t be cops.
As with Floyd, there was no earthly reason Wright had to die. Even if it was, as the police are claiming, an “accidental discharge” of the officer’s firearm, why was any kind of weapon involved?
Many will push back and claim these killings are the fault of the deceased and have nothing to do with the deceased’s skin color. That first part is clearly wrong (again, the punishment for resisting arrest isn’t death), and there’s ample evidence to knock down the second part as well.
In 2018, Akira Lewis was pulled over for a seat belt violation in Kansas. Lewis began fighting with one of the arresting officers and the other officer, in a scene that mirrors what happened with Wright, mistook her gun for her Taser and shot Lewis.
Lewis survived, but court records showed the officer, after firing her gun, shouted: “Oh, (expletive), I shot him.”
Same expletive as the Minnesota cop. And, in case you hadn’t guessed, Lewis has the same skin color as Wright. And Floyd.
I understand the police operate in a violent country overrun with guns. And there are certainly times when officers justifiably use lethal force.
But routine traffic stops and minor arrests aren’t those times. Those times should be exceedingly rare.
And if they’re not rare — and right now, they most certainly are not — then there’s a problem that needs fixing.
Maybe it starts with officers considering the worst possible outcome if they let a person like Wright go without shooting him.
It almost has to be a better outcome than Wright being dead and a police officer saying, “Oh, (expletive), I shot him.”