Was it a fair sentence?

[Dreampuff]

Yesterday Kim Potter, the officer who shot and killed Dante Wright, was given a 2-year prison sentence so she will spend a total of 16 months in prison and the rest on probation. She has already served nearly two months of that sentence so she should be out April, 2023. It may have just been a careless mistake, but when it happened she didn't even try to help him or ask other officers to help him. She was too busy rolling around on the ground wanting someone to call her union representative and worried that she would be going to jail.

She seems so sincere, but I noticed that when she was giving her statement, she was sobbing and could barely speak and when the judge said she couldn't be heard and asked for a microphone, she stopped the sobbing and calmly thanked the person for the microphone. You really have to wonder.

[hlthe2b]

1. I think her emotion was part real and a large part calculated strategy. I think a minimum of 5 years

would have been just. 24 months is an absolute slap in the face to the victim's family given any non-police officer guilty of similar manslaughter would likely have gotten more. Mitigating circumstances? She TRAINED officers for decades to avoid doing what SHE did. Her actions following the shooting were all about protecting her--not possibly saving the victim. My sympathy lies with the victim and his family.

[2naSalit]

4. +++++++++!!!

[2naSalit]

2. Not by a long shot...

Crying seems to be the ploy these days. Especially for getting off on a murder charge if your a white person who only killed a person of color.

[Mike Nelson]

3. I think...

... there is no fair outcome. Nothing will bring the victim back to life. Still, I think we should accept the decision, and the sentence. I wonder if the family will now move on to civil action - they could become very wealthy, but it will still never replace the life lost. In the big picture, I do believe it was not intended... the woman did not set out to murder him. Our society should look at the bigger picture - how to we prevent stuff like this from happening? Well, officers carry guns. Maybe look at training... specifically what people we allow to carry guns. Of course, officers are thrown into situations where criminals have guns. Maybe we should do a better job regulating guns? Maybe police officers can have "guns" that always knock a person out, but never kill the person? Why can't a weapon like this be invented?

[hlthe2b]

5. She WAS the trainer with decades of experience. I call BS. Civilians guilty of similar get more.

Abysmal. She did nothing except try to save herself after the incident. No attempt to help the victim--just calls to her union rep. How can you defend her? I can have empathy, but my sympathy lies with the victim's family who see her given a sentence well UNDER guidelines and less than you or I would have gotten for a similar manslaughter conviction. It is truly an affront to justice.

[happy feet]

6. I don't get

Your seeming empathy for an experienced officer who was a trainer and was trading the other officer’s during the stop. No other officers fired not even the officer in direct contact w Daunte. Why not let him drive away and arrest him at his residence? They had his info. IMHO she was showing off for the trainees and perceived danger ONLY because Daunte was black. I’ve seen video of a white man who jumped back in his car and drove off. Told the officers he was going to ignore them and do so while they let him drive away.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Comparison of Kim Potter's sentence versus Crystal Mason's sentence

Killing an unarmed black person is far worst than attempting to register to vote

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Dreampuff]

8. So glad I'm not the only one who was thinking the sentence was too light.

I was actually hoping for 7 years.

It does sound like there will be a civil suit and I hope they win big, even though it still won't be true justice. The timing was unbelievable since just a few miles away, the trial of George Floyd's murder was in progress. Since she had been an officer for 26 years, it won't be easy to blame it on training and after learning about the differences between the taser and the gun, the mistake doesn't really make sense either.

Unfortunately, I only caught a small segment of Ben Crump's statement, but he brought up the fact that a black officer shot a white woman and got 12 years. It didn't sound like "Justice for all" to me.