A demonstration in Minneapolis on April 11, 2021, after the death of a black youth killed by police. – Kerem Yucel / AFP
After the death of a young black man following a shooting involving the police, protests erupted this Sunday evening in a neighborhood of Minneapolis, American city where the trial of a police officer accused of the murder of George Floyd is taking place.
Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old African-American boy called her to warn her that he was being taken away by the police, she told the crowd, according to media reports.
A traffic violation
Katie Wright then recounted hearing police officers asking her son to drop his phone and one of them ended the call. Soon after, Daunte Wright’s girlfriend called her to tell her that her son had been shot. The Minnesota Criminal Affairs Bureau has confirmed that it is investigating the involvement of a police officer in a shooting at Brookling Center, northwest of Minneapolis, without revealing the identity of the victim.
Police officers arrested the driver of a car for a traffic violation, according to a statement from the Brooklyn Center Police Department. They then realized that he was the subject of an arrest warrant and tried to arrest him. But he got back into his car and a police officer used his weapon, hitting the driver, who died on the spot, according to this source. The passenger in the vehicle was injured, without her life being in danger, and transported to hospital, the statement said, not specifying the identity of the woman either.
Trial of Derek Chauvin
Some 200 people then gathered at Brooklyn Center on Sunday night, facing police in riot gear. According to the newspaper Star Tribune, the crowd smashed the windshields of two police vehicles and the police “used non-lethal weapons to disperse them”. After an hour, the police reduced their presence and the crowd lit candles and chalked messages on the sidewalk demanding “justice for Daunte Wright”. The mayor of Brooklyn Center lamented on Twitter this “tragic” incident and called on protesters to remain “peaceful” to avoid any further use of force.
But new incidents erupted when several hundred protesters gathered outside Brooklyn Center Police Headquarters. The police then fired stun grenades and tear gas to disperse the crowd, noted a journalist. The incident took place in the Minneapolis trial of Dereck Chauvin, a police officer accused of the murder of George Floyd, an African-American who died last May in that city, after being immobilized for long minutes below the knee of this policeman. His death sparked months of protests and riots across the country denouncing racism and police brutality.