My first reaction to learning of the sentence given to a former Minneapolis police officer who shot a young man to death thinking she was firing a Taser at him, and not her pistol, was that she got off too lightly.
Former cop Kim Potter will serve two years in the slammer and on supervised probation in the shooting death of Daunte Wright.
Potter is a white woman; Wright was African American.
She got into a tussle with Wright during a stop. Wright started resisting arrest. Potter reached for her service pistol and shot Wright. She carried her Taser on the other side of her belt. The Taser is bright yellow; the pistol is black. They feel differently in the hand and they certainly look differently.
I was horrified when I first heard of the incident. How could a trained police officer make such a grievous error? How does one reach for one device thinking she was reaching for another one?
Potter deserved to spend the maximum amount of time after a jury convicted her of involuntary manslaughter. Then the thought occurred to me … finally! She didn’t intend to shoot Daunte Wright with her service weapon.
I am still wrestling with the correctness of the sentence. I guess I just am not as dumbstruck by the act as I was initially.
Potter is done with police work. Of that I am absolutely certain. It’s just as well, given the horrifying mistake she made in an incident that never should have ended as tragically as it did.