The echoing crack of a gun shot followed by the harrowing proclamation, “Holy shit! I shot him!” has caused national uproar that has become all too familiar. Another unarmed black American has been killed by the police.

The shooting occurred in Minnesota between a now former Brooklyn Center Police Officer, Kim Potter and a resident by the name of Daunte Wright. The officer has been charged in the shooting. But she has attempted to justify her actions as a mere accident. But in the wake of a violent killing, “whoopsie fucking daisy” just doesn’t seem to suffice as a feasible explanation.   

Robbing a young man of his life because you could not clearly differentiate between your service weapon and a taser is not an accident.

An accident is rear-ending another driver four days after you get your driver’s license. An accident is dropping a 45 pound plate on your big toe. An accident is forgetting to call a family member on their birthday. An accident is missing your exit on the highway because you have the radio up too loud. The corelating aspect to all the aforementioned situations is that all of those accidental occurrences had little to no long-lasting trauma or ramifications as a result of them happening.   

An accident implies the absence of deliberate cause. And what occurred between Daunte Wright and former officer Potter does not seem to lack deliberation. There is a process of rationalization, realization, and acquisition that is involved in drawing a firearm of any kind, especially when coupled with the intention of firing it. That process itself does away with the narrative of the killing being even remotely accidental. The term accident coincides with the notion of something that could have been avoided. And when a death is the result of a loaded pistol being pointed at and fired upon another human being, there is little room for an argument in the defense of avoidance. The murder of Daunte Wright was far from accidental. The word that adequately describes Potter's actions is negligent. Potter acted without heed and upon impulse when she took the life of Daunte Wright.  

Moments before the fatal incident, Wright was pulled over by Potter for two reasons: the registration tags on his vehicle were expired and he had air fresheners hanging from his rearview window. As absurd as it sounds, having air-fresheners is a minor-infraction in Potter’s former jurisdiction. Therefore, she was acting within the parameters of her job when she pulled Wright’s vehicle over. But that is where the proper execution of her job ended. Officer Potter ran Wright’s license and found that he had an outstanding warrant for a misdemeanor offense. When confronted by officers about his warrant, Wright tried to evade the police. While he was struggling to escape in his vehicle, Officer Potter announced that she was going to tase him. Instead, she pulled out a loaded firearm and shot and killed Daunte Wright. Immediately after shooting Wright, Potter exclaimed, “Holy Shit! I shot him!”

The discovery of a warrant for a misdemeanor crime does not serve as the grounds for execution. That is a violation of the basic civil rights guaranteed to all American citizens. It is a violation of the entire justice system. The police have no right to act as though they are the scales of justice. There is no justification for this type of officer involved killing. The archaic argument of “he should have just complied” will not stand. In a free nation no citizen is deserving of death because they refuse to listen to the commands of a civil servant. A civil servant that is afforded the opportunity to have their occupation based on the taxes paid by people like Daunte Wright.

There is a lacking delineation between the roles of judge, jury, and executioner. This far supersedes the idea of blurred lines. This is exemplary of a dangerous level of ambiguity concerning the roles and responsibilities of police officers.   

When the stewards of law and civility are so poorly trained that they cannot recognize the difference between lethal and not-lethal measures, then there is a substantial problem.

When a traffic stop that was derived from the presence of expired tags and air-fresheners dangling from the rear view mirror of a car ends in the murder of an unarmed citizen, questions regarding the training of our officers rightfully begin to arise.

The loss of Daunte Wright is irreparable. As is with others that have been killed because of blatantly thoughtless policework.

In 2015, an unarmed black man, Eric Harris was killed by former Oklahoma reserve deputy Robert Bates. Bates also indicated that he mistook his service weapon for his taser thus carelessly and fatally firing upon Mr. Harris. Bates served two years in prison. Harris’ family is suing the department for providing their officers with poor training that resulted in the loss of their loved one.  

The negligence of these situations is disgusting, disappointing, and unfortunately representative of the recurrent issue of our police acting as a force of absolution rather than adhering to their actual duties of servanthood. Being a police officer is a noble and needed profession. A society does not function without law. But our country has so aggressively romanticized our police force that we often forget, they are no more or less accountable than the citizens they serve.  

No one in a civilized nation should be able to able to kill another human being and provide an explanation for their actions that is usually reserved for a child that spilled a glass of milk.    

It was an accident?

Holy shit. You killed him.