Killing of Daunte Wright

A Sunday in April

It’s early afternoon on a Sunday—April 11, 2021—in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and the world feels tense. Spring sunlight can’t quite pierce the heaviness that sits over the city’s residential blocks. For many, the grief of George Floyd’s killing—less than a year before and just miles away—is still raw. The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former officer charged in Floyd’s death, is dominating headlines and setting nerves on edge. In that atmosphere, routine feels fragile, normalcy half-imagined.

In one white Buick, Daunte Wright—a 20-year-old Black man, boyfriend, father, and son—drives through Brooklyn Center, a suburb just north of Minneapolis. Unknown to him or his family, the next half hour will end with a life lost, entire communities shaken, and a new name added to the national conversation about race, policing, and justice.

The Stop: Ordinary and Unforgiving

The reason police pull Daunte over sounds simple: expired tabs. Officers from the Brooklyn Center Police Department spot his car at 63rd Avenue North and Orchard Avenue North, not far from a cluster of apartment complexes. Daunte is not alone—a female passenger, his girlfriend, is beside him.

Officers check his registration, a standard procedure. But nothing in Brooklyn Center is really standard anymore—especially not for young men of color pulled over by police. When the background check pings, it brings up an outstanding warrant for Daunte’s arrest, connected to an alleged misdemeanor weapons charge and a protective order.

Officer Kim Potter, a 26-year police veteran and field training officer, arrives on scene. She’s been with the force longer than Daunte Wright has been alive. As the officers approach, their voices—later preserved on body camera footage—are calm but purposeful. Daunte tries to make sense of their questions.

What began as a careless but common violation—expired tags—suddenly shifts. What happens next happens quickly. In policing, some seconds last forever; others vanish without warning.

Seven Minutes

At around 2:00 p.m., the officers explain the warrant. Daunte is standing next to his car, compliant but clearly nervous. The tone in the footage tilts abruptly as officers attempt to place him in handcuffs. He resists—pulling away and climbing back into the driver’s seat. There’s a struggle, the kind that’s become all too familiar on American streets.

Officer Potter is behind him, weapon drawn. She shouts, “Taser! Taser! Taser!”—her voice rising, urgent. But she isn’t holding her Taser. In her hand is her department-issued Glock. She fires a single round into Daunte’s chest. There’s a split second of silence.

Daunte, wounded but conscious, steps on the gas. The Buick lurches forward, racing away for several blocks before crashing into another parked vehicle. His girlfriend survives. By the time paramedics arrive, Daunte Wright is gone—a torn shirt, a quiet heartbeat, a life the city cannot get back.

The Scene and the Screens

Word spreads fast. Police body camera footage is reviewed almost immediately, then distributed by city officials—first to grieving family, then to the general public. It leaves little ambiguity about what happened. In the jagged reality of the images—voices, hands, uniforms, the sharp bark of a mistaken command—people recognize the old pattern. The justification from police (“an accident,” “a tragic mistake”) cannot erase what everyone sees: yet another unarmed Black man dead at the hands of law enforcement.

Within hours, the intersection is transformed. Neighborhood residents and strangers gather at a growing makeshift memorial: candles flickering in the Minnesota dusk, armfuls of bright flowers, scrawled signs bearing Daunte’s name, phone numbers for legal aid, and hand-written pleas—“Justice for Daunte,” “Black Lives Matter.” Yellow police tape flutters between traffic signs, cordoning off what’s now hallowed ground.

Protests, Pain, and the Streets at Night

That evening, the grief comes rippling out. Hundreds—then thousands—march on Brooklyn Center’s police station, holding up signs and chanting Daunte’s name. Their anger, though loud, is not new; it’s layered on months of outrage over George Floyd’s murder. Police form barricades, set up armored vehicles, and stand in riot gear. The city declares a curfew.

Over the next days, the unrest grows. In the commotion—rubber bullets, chemical spray, heartbreak and fury—some businesses are damaged or looted. Local property losses run into the millions. The Minnesota National Guard deploys over 500 soldiers to the area. The streets of Brooklyn Center look more like a war zone than a Minneapolis suburb. At night, the city flickers with spotlights and smoke, the lines taut between protest and police.

Inside and Outside the System

Daunte Wright’s death does not just echo; it galvanizes. Calls go out for justice, not just nightly from protest crowds, but from state and national leaders. “We need accountability and justice,” tweets Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. President Joe Biden appears on camera, urging calm but urging change, too. The mayor of Brooklyn Center, the city manager, the police chief—all find themselves under scrutiny. Within days, Police Chief Tim Gannon and Officer Kim Potter both resign.

It’s not just the leadership that’s on trial—it's the system that put Daunte Wright and Kim Potter on that street, in those few brutal seconds.

The Reckoning: Courtrooms and Consequences

To some, Kim Potter’s explanation is distressingly familiar: She meant to fire her Taser, not her gun. She confesses this on video, even as Daunte’s body is being covered in a white sheet. "I grabbed the wrong gun," she says, her hands shaking. The Brooklyn Center police department confirms she completed the standard Taser-versus-firearm training each year. Still, it isn’t enough.

Kim Potter is arrested, charged with second-degree manslaughter, and later convicted. The courtroom is quiet as Daunte Wright’s family testifies: about his laughter, about his anxiety around police, about his son who will grow up without a father. In February 2022, Potter is sentenced to two years in prison.

But no legal measure could feel like enough. “Accountability is not justice,” Daunte’s mother says, as she holds a press conference outside the courthouse. For many watching—a nation now tuned as much to bodycam footage as to evening news—it feels like another tragic rerun: impossible pain, possible reforms, and insufficient answers.

Ripple Effects: Reform and Change

In the weeks and months that follow, the city of Brooklyn Center is forced to reckon with itself. Residents, activists, and city leaders work—sometimes together, sometimes not—to reimagine what public safety means. The city passes the “Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Community Safety and Violence Prevention Resolution,” shifting certain traffic offenses out of police hands and toward unarmed civilian responders.

Minnesota legislators call for—though sometimes fail to pass—statewide police reforms. Other cities, watching Brooklyn Center closely, consider changes to how and why police make traffic stops, and how Taser and firearm training is handled. New policies are written in direct language: more oversight, clearer boundaries, an end to traffic stops for petty infractions.

Some changes are immediate. Officers in Brooklyn Center get mandatory “differentiation training” meant to prevent future fatal mix-ups between Taser and firearm. Others feel slower: city councils form committees, activists attend hearings, lawyers file lawsuits. In June 2022, Brooklyn Center arranges a $3.25 million settlement with Daunte Wright’s family, promising to invest in community improvements and mental health response.

The Shadow That Remains

By spring of 2023, Kim Potter is released from prison, having served 16 months. The city is quieter now, but reminders linger at every intersection—a mural here, a street sign shaped by protest, a parent clutching a photograph at yet another vigil. Brooklyn Center—like so many American cities—is forced to keep living with the story, forced to remember.

The killing of Daunte Wright remains unfinished business for those who lived it and those who watched it unfold. It joins a long chain of deaths that activate and exhaust, inspire anger and grief, policy and protest. For his family, and for a generation raised on hashtags and helicopter news footage, justice feels impossibly slow.

Nationwide, the conversation continues—in city halls, in public comment forums, in late-night living rooms. New activists are born in the shadow of old trauma, and communities debate what it truly means for the system to change.

What We Know Now

Years have passed, but Daunte Wright’s story remains a pivot point. Local reforms in Brooklyn Center have become national conversation starters—on the deadly stakes of minor infractions, on the difference between accountability and justice, on whether policing in America can truly change.

The intersection where Daunte was killed still bears the traces of that Sunday: faded candles, wilted roses, plastic-wrapped photos turning brittle with time. The names etched there are not easily washed away.

As of 2024, the country is still counting losses and searching for new ways forward. Answers remain elusive, but the questions—about power, about protection, about who gets to walk away from a traffic stop—refuse to fade. And the memory of Daunte Wright, in all its pain and promise, endures in the struggle that came after.