Kim Potter Testifies She 'Didn't Want to Hurt Anybody' in Daunte Wright Shooting

On Friday, Kim Potter took the stand in a Minneapolis courtroom and told jurors she "didn't want to hurt anybody" on the day she shot and killed Daunte Wright. Her testimony was at times tearful. She said she shouted a warning about using her Taser after she saw fear in a fellow officer's face.

Potter, 49, has said she meant to draw her Taser rather than her handgun during the April 11 traffic stop in Brooklyn Center. She is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. Wright was 20, a Black motorist pulled over for expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. Sobbing, Potter said she was "sorry it happened," and that much of her memory of the moments after the shooting "is missing."

She was training another officer, Anthony Luckey, that day. She testified that Luckey noticed Wright's car in a turn lane with its signal on inappropriately, then saw the air freshener and the expired tags. She said she most likely would not have made the stop had she been patrolling alone, since many drivers were behind on renewing their tags at that point in the pandemic. Still, she said, it is important for trainees to have many encounters with the public. When the officers learned of an outstanding warrant for a weapons violation, she said, they were required to take Wright into custody. They also had to identify his female passenger, because a woman, a different one as it turned out, had taken out a restraining order against him.

Once the three officers at the scene decided to arrest Wright, Potter said, the encounter "just went chaotic." Body camera footage shows Wright pulling away from the officers and getting back into his car. "I remember yelling, 'Taser, Taser, Taser,' and nothing happened, and then he told me I shot him," she said through tears. Her camera recorded Wright saying, "Ah, he shot me," an instant after the shot.

Her attorneys have argued that she made a mistake, but also that deadly force would have been justified had she intended it, because another officer, then-Sgt. Mychal Johnson, was at risk of being dragged by the car. Potter did not describe the shooting as a mistake in court. She seemed to give a chronology rather than any insight into what she was thinking. Her lawyer Earl Gray walked her through the day without asking whether she meant to draw the Taser. She also testified that she had no physical training on "weapons confusion," which was mentioned in training but not practiced. In 26 years on the force she had never fired a Taser on duty, though she had drawn one a few times to de-escalate, and she had never used her gun until she shot Wright.

On cross-examination, prosecutor Erin Eldridge pressed her on training, getting Potter to agree that use-of-force training was a "key component" of being an officer. Eldridge also quoted a defense expert's report in which Potter reportedly said, "I don't have an answer, my brain said grab the Taser." Potter said she did not recall saying that. She was matter-of-fact for most of the questioning but grew emotional when Eldridge played video of her pointing her gun at Wright. Earlier in the week, a prosecution witness testified that she would not have used a Taser if she thought it could cause death or great bodily harm.

Potter said she has been in therapy since the shooting and has left Minnesota. She resigned two days after the shooting, saying "there was so much bad things happening" and that she didn't want anything bad to happen to the city. Wright's death set off several days of angry demonstrations in Brooklyn Center, while another white officer, Derek Chauvin, was on trial in nearby Minneapolis for killing George Floyd.

Before she testified, defense witness Laurence Miller, a psychologist who teaches at Florida Atlantic University, told jurors that under high stress, ingrained training can "hijack" normal reactions, producing an "action error." Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist not involved in the trial, has said there is no science behind the theory. Eldridge also quoted a 2010 article by Miller saying many police mistakes are preventable through proper training and practice.

State guidelines call for just over seven years in prison for first-degree manslaughter and four years for second-degree, though prosecutors plan to seek longer sentences. Closing arguments are Monday, after which the case goes to a mostly white jury.