The killing of Daunte Wright is subsumed by the fact that he was an unarmed young black man who shouldn’t have been shot, shouldn’t have died. There can be no dispute about this. But that doesn’t mean that all other facts and circumstances cease to exist, unless the only thing that matters is that it happened. And to some, that’s certainly the case, Wright’s death coming during the Derek Chauvin trial, following almost immediately upon the stop of Lt. Caron Nazario, both within miles of each other.
Twenty-six year police officer Kimberly Potter has been charged with manslaughter 2 upon her claim that she thought she was firing her Taser when she fired her service weapon and killed Wright. There are arguments that cut both ways as to the veracity of her claim, though there is no reason why she would have wanted to kill him rather than prevent him from fleeing after being stopped for expired tags and having an open warrant in an armed robbery case. The man 2 charge tells us that its premised on the reckless mistake of shooting her gun rather than the Taser. And, indeed, if that’s what happened, it would seem quite likely that she was reckless.
But these people, these incidents, reflect the “rage” of those for whom one word answers say all they need to know. There’s another guy, who happens to be a black guy too, who got caught in a different kind of crossfire here, although nobody really cares much about him. His name is Curt Boganey. He was the city manager of Brooklyn Center, “was” being the operative word, and he was responsible for overseeing the police.
Brooklyn Center leaders were poised to fire the city’s police chief Monday evening, following the police shooting of a 20-year-old Black man Sunday afternoon that touched off a night of unrest in the city.
At an emergency afternoon meeting, the City Council voted to give authority over the police department to the mayor’s office and to fire City Manager Curt Boganey, who’d been with the city since 2005, Council Member Dan Ryan said during a virtual council workshop.
Did the police chief do anything wrong? Could he have done anything different that would have changed what happened here? No matter, and the chief, Tim Gannon, quit because there was no reason to stay. The chief was a big step away from Potter, but he had to be thrown under the bus. And Boganey, the city manager, was a giant leap away from the chief. So why did he have to go too?
At a virtual council workshop, Council Member Kris Lawrence-Anderson said she voted to remove the city manager because she feared for her property and retaliation by protestors if she had voted to keep him.
“He was doing a great job. I respect him dearly,” she said. “I didn’t want repercussions at a personal level.”
The weapon of mob violence is fear. From what the national media shows, there are protests which appear “mostly peaceful” and police trying to silence the protesters using gas and rubber bullets, what comes off as an unjustified use of force against people exercising their constitutional right to protest. Yet Curt Boganey, who had nothing to do with what happened to Daunte Wright, was fired because a council member who thought he was doing a great job feared “retaliation by protesters if she voted to keep him.” The Star Tribune included some details omitted from national coverage that might provide some insight as to Council Member Kris Lawrence-Anderson’s fear.
Some guard members blocked the entrance to the Shingle Creek Crossing shopping plaza in Brooklyn Center where social media posts showed looters ransacking stores and carrying off everything from printers to clothing.
What did a shopping plaza have to do with Potter’s conduct?
At the nearby Walmart, flip-flops and bottles of fruity drinks littered the parking lot where a man who gave his name as Thomas was part of a small army of store employees picking up trash and debris.
“All of our large screen TV’s were taken,” he said.
Was Walmart responsible for Daunte Wrght’s death?
Alarms blared at a Verizon store across the way where the front window was broken and a TV was ripped off the wall. Looters had ransacked the Icon Beauty Salon and left boxes of fake eyelashes behind in the parking lot. At Aspen Dental, only the front door sustained damage, but the clinic canceled all Monday appointments.
Before he quit, Chief Gannon held a press conference where he said the R-word.
“There was no riot,” one reporter responded.
“Don’t do that,” another person is heard saying, as others joined in that there wasn’t a riot.
Whether there was a riot, looting, or just “mostly peaceful” protest broken up by police using excessive force might be subject to debate, although all the offending large screen TVs at Walmarts didn’t walk off on their own. But given what’s happened, just over the past ten days, isn’t the rage understandable?
This year to April 12, 52 black people were fatally shot by police, just three of whom were unarmed, and 109 white people suffered the same fate, five of whom were unarmed, according to a Washington Post database.
Yet, City Manager Boganey was hard at work doing everything he could to placate the demands for “racial justice.”
The incident also comes as Brooklyn Center moves ahead with hiring a leader for its new Office of Anti-Racist Practices and Policies, which will review city policies and recommend changes. Before his termination was announced, Boganey had said Monday that he hoped to fill the position within a few months. The city also will continue with its anti-racism training for staff and City Council members.
It didn’t save Boganey’s job because a City Council member feared personal retribution from the mostly peaceful mob. You’ll know the winners and losers of this battle because the losers get fired and the winners get new big screen TVs, but nobody is allowed to mention such things and the media will surely not report it. After all, the only fact that matters is that a 20-year-old black man is dead who shouldn’t be.
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Uhmm, at the risk of being a pedantic asshole, Lt. Nazario was pepper sprayed by cops in Virginia… while technically w/in miles of Minneapolis (in the sense that the distance can be measured in miles) it wasn’t anywhere near where Mssrs Floyd and Wright met their ends.
And his name is spelled Nazario…
Scott, I think you need more coffee.
Corrections are good when I make mistake, so letting me know doesn’t make anyone a pedantic asshole. How one does it, on the other hand…
“There was no riot…Don’t do that”.
This is the response of the media in a situation where stores are being ransacked and a city leader is fearing violent mob retribution”.
When it comes to our media, facts always yield to the narrative. Consider that every time you read something they write or watch something they create. It’s probably fiction, driven by what they believe rather than what is.
What struck me wasn’t that the reporters were going to report that there was no riot, because that was “their truth.” It was their telling Gannon, the person whose press conference it was, that he couldn’t call it a riot, as if that’s no longer a permissible word.
Yeah, for most of the media, there’s been one riot in America in the last couple of years, and it occurred this past January 6th.
The people stealing the televisions are justified because…..reasons I guess. The people burning out businesses last summer were justified too, but we need to ignore the race of a lot of the victims because the narrative MUST prevail.
It’s really revolting. The media deserves zero respect or credibility. And they have the gall to blame it on us that we don’t trust them.
I want to believe the media. I really do. They just won’t let me.
There is no excuse for the looting and burning but there is reason to examine the other players in the system.
Although Potter was the sharp end actor who screwed up big time, police-involved shootings are seldom the result of one “bad apple.” What made her think she needed to make the stop, especially in the fraught atmosphere of Minneapolis in April? What kind of training regimen allowed her to grab the wrong weapon? What other systemic problems contributed to the event? This case cries out for the kind of Sentinel Event Review as described in “Mending Justice” (NIJ 2014). This approach to bad outcomes works in aviation and medicine and has shown promise in the CJ system. Such reviews regularly take place in Milwaukee and in Tucson.
When the question is asked, “Who is responsible?” the answer is usually “Everyone involved, to one degree or another … if not by making a mistake, then by failing to catch one.” And “everyone” can include not only those who operate at the sharp end of the system, like the police, but also the distant actors who set their budgets, assign their caseloads, and define their legal authority.”
The idea of doing an M&M for police has some merit, provided it can be accomplished seriously and without an overlay of political presumption. Even so, there are differences between medicine/aviation and law/policing that don’t fit neatly into the analogy. Law is a far more complex system of competing rights and interests, even if people choose to not to see them, appreciate them or pretend no other interests matter except the ones they value (at the moment).
The answer of “everyone” is fashionable but vapid and unhelpful. If the point of a serious review is to prevent it from happening again, the the chaos theory approach of everyone makes it a pointless effort as it fixes nothing.
But these people, these incidents, reflect the “rage” of those for whom one word answers say all they need to know.
You and others may or may not remember the Jesuit scholar, Fr. John Courtney Murray, SJ, particularly his timeless work: We Hold These Truths, 1960.
I continually refer to this work when observing the raucous discord in our public square. Fr Murray argued that there exists Truths, accesible via reason, and we, as a nation, once deferred to them, which is what made our country work. The Founding Fathers, per Fr Murray, believed that:
the life of man in society under government is founded on truths, on a certain body of objective truth, universal in its import, accessible to the reason of man, definable, defensible.
Whether it was Washington, Ben Franklin or Abraham Lincoln, speeches from these great leaders often deferred to objective truth not “their” truth. Murray believed that Lincoln’s articulations, his reasoning, his statesmanship, offered a template of sorts as to an American doctrine revolving around a proposition.
If this assertion is denied, the American Proposition is, I think, eviscerated at one stroke….For the pragmatists there are, properly speaking, no truths; there are only results. But the American Proposition rests on the more traditional conviction that there are truths; that they can be known; that they must be held; for, if they are not held, assented to, consented to, worked into the texture of institutions, there can be no hope of founding a true City, in which men may dwell in dignity, peace, unity, justice, well-being, freedom.”
Prophetic. Prescient. We were warned, as is often the case with proper counsel. Now we have “peaceful protests” because there is no consensus.
Officer Potter made a deadly mistake and she has been charged. Justice needs to be served. But riots, mobs and obfuscation have no place in any reasonable society. Its tits up from here.
Very thoughtful. Thank you.
Nice detour esteemed one…
But what do you really need?
I know you organize your week around listing to listen to Pat Robison! 😉
Anyway, I might have missed it, but the focus on the scare-dy- cat council members is fluffy bullshit.
Did not see Curt’s words either?
***“All employees working for the city of Brooklyn Center are entitled to due process with respect to discipline,” Boganey said. “This employee will receive due process and that’s really all that I can say today.”
—–When pressed on whether he personally felt the officer should be fired, Boganey again called for due process.——
“If I were to answer that question, I’d be contradicting what I said a moment ago — which is to say that all employees are entitled to due process and after that due process, discipline will be determined,” Boganey said. “If I were to say anything else, I would actually be contradicting the idea of due process.”***
Anyway, any idea when Mr. Soze is gonna post up something from the vaults?
If not, let me know if he is gonna drag his feet and I will see if I have something to help speed him along with his sharing for humanity..
In the meantime, pull your head out of your ass and take a fucking vacation.
A lot of hard thinking can happen on vacations sometimes…
Fuck the scared-ey-cat’s. Find the meat. You probably got the chops?
PS. I know a guy that has a cure for the Aggregation Fever, if and ever you may start- a- looking… In the mean time taker a fucking vacation!
No vacations. JB. No rest for the weary, cause ya know, there’s…
Kind of you to pick up JB’s slack.