The mother of slain 20-year-old Daunte Wright, Katie Wright, has taken to the podium to call for firing a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota police officer who she says tried to arrest her for filming a traffic stop.
Her son was shot and killed by Kim Potter, a police officer in Brooklyn Center, in April 2021 during a traffic stop. Potter was convicted of first and second-degree manslaughter in Wright’s killing and sentenced to two years in prison in February.
In less than three months after Potter’s sentence, Katie Wright says she saw a “high police presence” for a vehicle pulled over with at least one person on Wednesday. Her estimate is that the person in the vehicle was either 20 or 25 years old.
Upon seeing it, Katie Wright pulled over onto the highway shoulder and began to film the situation on her cellphone.
The ACLU of Minnesota commented on the matter, saying, “You have the right to record police actions as long as you do not interfere with their activities and are not breaking any other law.”
“All I was doing was my civic duty to pull over and make sure that those babies got home safe to their families because I don’t want what happened to me to happen to any other families,” Wright said during a press conference on Thursday.
She immediately posted the video to her Facebook page, while a body camera video of the incident was also released Thursday by the city of Brooklyn Center.
The footage shows an officer helping to arrest a suspect and place them into a police vehicle. The officer then turns his attention across the street toward Wright and can be heard saying, “She’s getting a ticket,” as another officer says, “Nah, don’t worry about it. Come on!”
The arrested person had told officers, “I don’t wanna be on that camera over there. She’s recording over there; I don’t want my face on camera because I don’t know what the f–k’s going on.”
It hasn’t been made immediately clear if the person being arrested says that in reference to Wright or someone else, but the officer continues toward Wright across multiple lanes of traffic and grabs her while asking for her driver’s license.
