Katie Wright, the mother of Daunte Wright, releases balloons to remember him two years after his death. (Via Brian Few Jr.)
The family of Daunte Wright remembered him in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department Tuesday, two years after he was killed during a traffic stop by Brooklyn Center police.
Daunte Wright died on April 11, 2021, during a botched traffic stop where Former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter shot him using her service pistol while yelling “taser, taser, taser.” Potter was convicted with first and second degree manslaughter in February 2022. She is set to be released from prison on April 24, after spending 16 months in prison.
“The same officer that killed our son is going to be out, and she’s going to be able to sit with her family and hold her sons, and she's going to be able to go home to them in less than two weeks,” Daunte Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, said. “While we sit here and celebrate and throw balloons in the air because we don’t have our son to hold, we don’t have our son to touch. Every day I’m afraid I’m going to forget his voice.”
Potter’s sentence is significantly shorter than the state’s sentencing guidelines, which called for a maximum sentence of 15 years and at minimum 86 months in prison. Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu said that Potter deserved leniency because “she never intended to hurt anyone.”
“The justice system failed us, like it failed so many other families,” Katie Wright said.
Daunte Wright’s family received a $3.2 million dollar settlement from the city of Brooklyn Center, along with an agreement to provide deescalation training, along with implicit bias and cultural proficiency training by the University of St. Thomas. However, Katie Wright says that promised changes have yet to happen.
“To lose Daunte in a city that promised so many changes, and all we see is baby steps,” Wright said. “Baby steps [are] going to kill our babies.”