Daunte Wright should not have been killed in a routine traffic stop. But once again, police overreacted by pulling out a weapon when there was no need for it.
In this case, we’re supposed to believe that a 26-year police veteran mistook her Taser for her automatic service pistol and shot Wright in the chest by mistake. That’s hard to believe, but it’s the excuse police officials have given.
Regardless, there are much more sensible ways this encounter could have transpired. Suppose a trained, unarmed traffic monitor had stopped Wright for driving a car with expired license plates, rather than the police.
If that had happened, Wright would still be alive, Officer Kim Potter and Brooklyn Center police Chief Tim Gannon wouldn’t have resigned from their jobs, and protesters in the Minneapolis suburb wouldn’t be clashing with law enforcement officials in the streets.
Maybe it’s time, for everyone’s sake, to defund the police.
We haven’t heard much talk about that lately. “Defund the police” became a wedge issue in last year’s presidential election. Now that conservatives no longer need to use fearmongering against Democrats, the debate seems to have lost steam.
Before people get all riled up, let’s define what “defund the police” is and what it isn’t. Michigan U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib says it’s time to get rid of policing altogether. Here’s what she tweeted Monday.
“It wasn’t an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist. Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.”
While some of what she said is true, most levelheaded people disagree with the concept of totally disbanding police departments or allowing criminals to roam freely. For good reason, this is a nation of laws, and someone must enforce them.
Of course, there are some bad laws on the books. The “defund the police” movement, in part, is about fixing or eliminating bad laws. But it’s mostly about changing the way we view policing — not shutting down police departments across the country.
The idea is to divert a portion of the more than $100 billion state and local governments collectively spend on police to programs that either help alleviate crime or provide trained professionals other than police to respond to certain calls.
Since George Floyd’s killing last year, more than 20 major cities have made moves to divert some funding from police departments to programs that address the underlying causes of violence, such as mental health, housing and food access problems.
According to defund the police activists, more than $840 million has been divested from police departments across the country, and at least $160 million has been reinvested in communities.
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Columns are opinion content that reflect the views of the writers.
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Activists want to ban police from stopping people on minor traffic violations as a pretext to investigate a more serious crime — incidents that often occur due to racial profiling. Trained mediators whose primary goal is to avoid creating volatile situations would respond to traffic stops rather than police, who often escalate confrontations.
Traffic stops are the most common way most people, regardless of race, encounter police. According to the Stanford Open Policing Project at Stanford University, police pull over more than 20 million motorists a year.
But the way these routine stops are handled is vastly different depending on race. Black drivers are 20% more likely to be stopped than white drivers and are twice as likely to be searched, the research project found.
An NPR investigation that aired in January found that since 2015, police had fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women across the country. At least 75% of the officers were white.
More than a quarter of the killings occurred during traffic stops, NPR reported, and 24 of those killed — or 18% — had a mental illness.
Wright was pulled over Sunday afternoon after officers spotted expired registration tags on his car. In a routine check, the officers discovered an outstanding arrest warrant for missing a court appearance on two misdemeanor charges.
As two officers attempted to handcuff him, the 20-year-old tried to get back into his car, resulting in a brief struggle. He was not armed, but Potter, who was standing nearby, yelled, “Taser, Taser” and shot him with a single bullet.
A trained traffic mediator would not have allowed the situation to get to that point.
The Stanford Law Review published an article in January by Jordan Blair Woods, a criminologist and legal scholar at the University of Arkansas School of Law, outlining what “traffic without the police” would look like.
He laid out the benefits of local governments reassigning most traffic enforcement duties to independent traffic agencies that would employ unarmed monitors to enforce traffic laws that do not require police intervention.
Minor traffic violations, such as expired license plates, would fall under that category, as would things like speeding, running a red light or failing to signal. Traffic monitors are not allowed to chase, detain, search or arrest people, though they could radio police for help if a serious crime, such as a DUI, has occurred.
In situations like Wright’s, a monitor would not try to make an arrest. The monitor would simply write a citation. If the driver became belligerent, the monitor would write down the license plate number and the citation would be mailed.
The primary goal here is de-escalation — making sure that everyone leaves the traffic stop without being physically harmed.
Too many police officers apparently don’t understand that simple concept. Until they do, police violence will remain one of the leading causes of death for young Black men in the United States.
