A protestor confronts police during a demonstration over the death of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.ImageSPACE/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Kim Potter, the police officer who shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota on Sunday, has resigned, as has the city’s police chief.

Potter, a 26-year veteran police officer, repeatedly shouted, “Taser!” before firing one fatal shot into Wright’s car. Tim Gannon, the former police chief, said that Potter had mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of her taser.

Wright’s parents don’t accept that explanation. “I lost my son,” Aubrey Wright, Daunte’s father, said in an interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America today. “He’s never coming back. I can’t accept that.”

“I have loved every minute of being a police officer and serving this community to the best of my ability,” Potter wrote in her resignation letter, “but I believe it is in the best interest of the community, the department, and my fellow officers if I resign immediately.”

Watch Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott announce the resignations below:

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate