We are furious and distraught following the police murder of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota on April 11.
The ACLU statement on Daunte Wright's murder expresses our feelings much more eloquently than we're able to. Below is an excerpt, you can read the full statement here.
“Daunte Wright should be alive today.
Taking a step back to listen to the circumstances surrounding Daunte Wright’s killing hammers home the heartbreaking truth that we’ve known for so long — Black people living in America are subject to having their lives violently ripped away from them and the ones they love at the hands of our government for absolutely nothing.
Daunte Wright now joins a long list of Black people whose lives were snatched from them as they attempted to simply live — Breonna Taylor as she slept in her home, George Floyd outside a convenience store, Eric Garner outside of a neighborhood bodega, Botham Jean as he ate ice cream on his living room couch, Tamir Rice as he played in the park."
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“It is clear that the only way to end the scourge of police violence is to immediately divest from policing institutions that, from their inception, have been used to oppress Black people. Instead, we must reinvest in Black and Brown communities that have for so long borne the brunt of these horrific acts of violence. It is time to end the criminal enforcement of low-level offenses. You don’t reform police — you remove their responsibilities and reallocate taxpayer money into harm-reducing solutions. It is now far past time for tangible action to avoid killings like that of Daunte Wright.”
