(BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn.) — As the trial of former police officer Kim Potter begins in Minnesota, the Brooklyn Center City Council has officially backed the formation of a new public safety department that will reimagine how traffic stops in the city are handled.
Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by Potter during a traffic stop in April. He was initially stopped for an expired registration tag, and when officers discovered he had an outstanding warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons charge, they tried to detain him.
That’s when things turned deadly: During a struggle, Potter shot Wright, and he drove off and crashed the car a few blocks away, according to officials. Wright has said she accidentally grabbed her firearm instead of her stun gun when she shot him.
Potter is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. She has pleaded not guilty to both charges.
The city council has now designated $1.3 million to fund the promises made in a police reform resolution that was passed back in May 2021 following Wright’s death.
“This is a real landmark moment,” Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott, who is also a council member, said in an interview with ABC News. “This is a start, and it is still a big step forward in doing this work.”
Wright’s death spurred a movement
Elliott created and presented the Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Community Safety and Violence Prevention Act less than a month following Wright’s death. Dimock-Heisler was a 21-year-old man on the autism spectrum who was fatally shot by Brooklyn Center officers during a domestic disturbance call last year. Charges were not filed against the officers.
The city council quickly voted unanimously to pass the resolution in honor of the two men.
“We’re taking a bold step here, this city,” Elliott said at a May 15 city council session discussing the vote. “But we can do it. We’re gonna do it.”
On Monday, the Brooklyn Center city council voted in favor of reducing police funding by about 1.6% in the upcoming year and shifting funds to create the new Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention. Brooklyn Center police will still be funded more than they were in 2020, according to budget documents shown at the meeting.
Along with the Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, which will be responsible for “overseeing all city agencies and city efforts regarding community health and public safety,” according to the resolution, there will be a new Community Response Department composed of unarmed, trained medical and mental health professionals and social workers to assist with medical, mental health and disability-related calls.
An unarmed, civilian Traffic Enforcement Department will also be created to response to “non-moving” traffic violations.
“[Police departments] are coming around and seeing how valuable this type of transformation is, and how much it frees them up from having to respond to mental health calls and calls related to social work,” Elliott said.
A New York Times investigation found that in the last five years, police killed more than 400 people during traffic stops, all of whom were not displaying a gun or a knife, or were under pursuit for a violent crime when they were killed. LINK?
The city will also implement a “citation and summons” policy requiring officers to only issue citations and ban “custodial arrests or searches of persons or vehicles for any non-moving traffic infraction, non-felony offense or non-felony warrant,” the resolution reads.
“This is what could happen in many small cities across this country,” said Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the local Islamic civil liberties and advocacy group CAIR-Minnesota. “The merits of this resolution is to do less harm and evaluate the amount of workload that police officers have to engage in that can create very volatile and dangerous situations for the public.”
The resolution also seeks to create new use of force policies and establish a new Community Safety and Violence Prevention Committee, composed of mostly city residents with direct or close experience with arrests, detention or contact with Brooklyn Center police.
The Brooklyn Center Police Department deferred to City of Brooklyn Center representatives for comment, who did not respond to ABC News’ requests. Elliott said BCPD officials are supportive of the compromises made on the resolution.
Still more to do, activists say
The ambitions of the initial proposal for the new department have been somewhat muted in the final revision of the budget.
Funds for 14 open police department positions were initially supposed to support the department’s creation, but the council approved freezing only three currently vacant police positions and instead will use lodging taxes and grants to assist in paying for the public safety changes for now.
Although the goal is to have 24/7 service to completely replace officers in traffic enforcement, according to Elliott, it’s not set in stone.
“I am fully committed to continuing to work with the community to make sure that the rest resolution is Public Safety Act and the programs and are fully funded in the year 2022,” Elliott said.
Katie Wright, Wright’s mother, was among many during the Dec. 6 city council budget meeting who expressed concern that this proposal would fall short of the original vision passed in April — a proposal named for her son.
“I don’t want my son’s name on a resolution that is not going to be effective, that is going to cause so much adversity in the community and that people are not in support of,” she said.
Local activists, who have been involved in the police reform efforts, say this is the first step toward fixing what they say is a broken criminal justice system. However, the over $9 million budget given to police — the most funding given to any government initiative in Brooklyn Center by a wide margin — is a point of contention for some.
“We know that anytime something is funded, that’s what gives it its power,” said Toshira Garraway, founder of support group Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, which is working with Wright’s family.
Citing the four fatal civilian shootings by law enforcement in Brooklyn Center since Wright’s death, she said that treading lightly on reform initiatives is not the way to go.
“We have to start doing what makes sense and we have to try a different avenue,” Garraway said. “We can’t go about things the same way and think that we’re gonna get a different outcome.”
ABC News’ Adia Robinson contributed to this report.
(WORCESTER, Mass.) — Despite having one of the nation’s highest vaccination rates, Massachusetts is in the midst of a full coronavirus resurgence. The state’s daily case average is now at its highest point in nearly a year, and in the last month alone, new hospital admissions have more than doubled.
In central Massachusetts, the UMass Memorial Health System is, once again, completely overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.
“We, right now, have more patients in the hospital, overall, than we have had at either of the two peaks previously. You come in one day and you say this is the worst we’ve ever seen it and you come back the next day and it’s even worse. This is very concerning, what’s going on right now,” UMass Memorial Health Care President and CEO Dr. Eric Dickson told during an interview ABC News Wednesday.
According to Dickson, many of the hospitals in the UMass Memorial health care system are currently at-capacity.
At UMass Memorial Medical Center, all 450 beds, which are typically available, are full. There are 75 patients waiting in the ER for a bed, including seven ICU patients.
“We’re running at more than 120% of capacity right now,” Dickson said. “There’s really no end in sight, which is the scary part for all of us.”
The health system’s latest surge is the result of the delta variant, said Dickson, who added that although the health system is actively sequencing patients, the omicron variant has yet to be detected in the patient population.
On top of the “intense pressure” and significant increase in COVID-19 patients overwhelming health care workers, hospitals are also seeing an increase in winter trauma-related incidents, such as slips, heart attacks and strokes.
“It’s really the perfect storm for a bed crisis,” Dickson added.
A strike among workers, in one of the hospitals in Worcester, has forced 100 beds offline, thus further reducing hospital capacity, while staffing shortages have greatly exacerbated the health care system’s struggle.
“You can’t imagine how exhausted caregivers are right now,” Dickson said. “The biggest challenge for us right now is that our people are extremely, extremely fatigued. This is their third surge over the course of about 20 months, and that’s really taking a toll on them.”
In addition, compounding its woes, UMass Memorial Health was forced to fire 200 employees last week after they refused to get vaccinated.
“We’ve got a problem getting patients out of the hospital, because there’s no staff in the nursing homes and they’re dealing with shortages,” Dickson said.
Dickson explained that he is greatly concerned by the fact that a state like Massachusetts, with more than 72% of its total population fully vaccinated, could be experiencing such a significant surge.
“This pandemic is clearly not over,” Dickson said. “This is really the toughest period of this whole pandemic right now for some of us,” adding that he was “extremely concerned” about the health system capacity to handle potential increases in people needing care, over the next several weeks and months.
The rest of the upcoming winter holidays also continue to be a major source of concern for Dickson and his teams, who saw a “big bump” in test positive cases and hospitalizations following Thanksgiving.
“Now you have a higher starting point, and you’re going to add Christmas and New Year’s on top of that. It really could get bad into mid January, and that’s what we’re most concerned about. We’re holding on right now, today. But if this keeps on going up for the next five, six weeks, I’m not quite sure where we’re going to get everyone in,” he said.
Although the majority — between 60 and 75% — of patients currently under care are unvaccinated, hospital officials have seen the impact of waning immunity over time.
“We even have some breakthrough cases of people that have received the booster, so there’s definitely a waning of the immunity over time, but it’s still your best protection is getting your COVID vaccine and then getting a booster,” Dickson said.
Ultimately, it is critical for all residents to do their best to slow the rise in infections by getting vaccinated and boosted, and by following important mitigation strategies to control the spread, Dickson said.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows is suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, after the panel moved to hold him in contempt for not cooperating with the probe.
Meadows is seeking relief “to invalidate and prohibit the enforcement of two overly broad and unduly burdensome subpoenas from a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives … issued in whole or part without legal authority in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States,” according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in D.C. District Court.
“Mr. Meadows, a witness, has been put in the untenable position of choosing between conflicting privilege claims that are of constitutional origin and dimension and having to either risk enforcement of the subpoena issued to him, not merely by the House of Representatives, but through actions by the Executive and Judicial Branches, or, alternatively, unilaterally abandoning the former president’s claims of privileges and immunities,” the lawsuit says. “Thus, Mr. Meadows turns to the courts to say what the law is.”
Jan. 6. committee chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., had said the panel would move to hold Meadows in contempt after Meadows failed to appear before the committee for his scheduled appearance Wednesday morning.
Following the filing of the lawsuit Wednesday, Thompson told reporters that the panel would move forward with holding Meadows in contempt next week.
On Tuesday, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that Meadows had informed the committee that he was no longer cooperating with the probe, after Meadows had earlier agreed to appear before the panel.
Meadows’ attorney, George J. Terwilliger II, told committee members in a letter that they had made an appearance for a deposition untenable because they have “no intention of respecting boundaries concerning Executive Privilege.”
In response, Thompson told Terwilliger in a letter Tuesday night that the committee has “no choice” but to recommend the former chief of staff be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate.
Thompson’s three-page letter says the committee believes Meadows has “no legitimate legal basis” to refuse to cooperate, given the content in Meadows’ memoir, which was published this week.
The letter also details some of the information and records Meadows has already provided to the committee, including emails from his personal account prior to Jan 6. regarding the election challenges, and data and text messages from his personal cell phone.
According to the letter, Meadows was messaging with one member of Congress about appointing alternate electors from key states to reverse the election results. “I love it,” Meadows replied, according to the letter.
The letter says Meadows also turned over messages he exchanged with a Jan. 6 rally organizer in early January, and another round of messages he exchanged about “a need” for then-President Trump to “issue a public statement that could have stopped the Jan. 6 attack.”
The letter also suggests Meadows may not have complied with federal record keeping laws, given the amount of records he produced from personal devices.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the committee, told ABC News that Meadows may have undercut his own argument against cooperating because of the reams of records he already turned over to the panel.
“He produced a number of documents to our committee, and we have a number of questions about those,” Schiff said. “Those are documents he clearly recognizes he has no viable claim of privilege about, and it’s hard to … reconcile how he can talk about Jan. 6 and his conversations about it and others for a book, but not to Congress.”
(MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.) — The trial of former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter kicked off on Wednesday. Potter is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop earlier this year.
Two witnesses for the prosecution were in the spotligjht on Day 1: Daunte Wright’s mother, Katie Bryant, and Brooklyn Center police officer Anthony Luckey.
Here’s the rundown of Day 1:
Potter’s training scrutinized in the courtroom
Erin Eldridge, a prosecutor with the Minnesota assistant attorney general’s office, presented the state’s case against Potter during the opening statements.
Eldridge read the oath that Brooklyn Center officers take to the jury: “I will never betray my badge, my integrity. my character, or the public interest. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions.”
Eldridge told jurors that police officers “have the responsibility to be mindful and attentive and acutely aware of the weapons that they carry, and the risks associated with those weapons,” targeting Potter’s defense that claims Potter had meant to grab her stun gun instead of her firearm when she fatally shot Daunte Wright.
“When it comes to those weapons, they have the responsibility to carry those weapons, and use those weapons appropriately,” Eldridge added.
Eldridge told the jury that they’ll hear evidence regarding stun gun and firearm training that Potter, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center police department, would have had.
Potter carried her weapons on her belt in the same way every day on the job, Eldridge told the jury, and that she wore her firearm on her dominant, right-hand side and her stun gun on her non-dominant, left side.
Potter was a 26-year veteran of the department.
Potter’s defense maintains that she accidentally shot Wright with her firearm when she meant to shoot him with her stun gun.
“She was also trained about the risks of pulling the wrong weapon and that drawing and firing the wrong weapon could kill someone,” Eldridge said. “She was trained to carry her weapons in this way. And she was trained on how to use them and how not to use them.”
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank later questioned Brooklyn Center Police Officer Anthony Luckey, who was at the fatal April 11 incident. He is the state’s second witness and was questioned on handgun and stun gun training.
“The policy was opposite side of your duty firearm,” Luckey said on the stand about Brooklyn Center police training. “That way, officers do not get their firearms confused with their Tasers.”
Luckey said that officers practice drawing the stun guns, go through slideshow lessons and perform continuous hands-on training regarding their weapons. They also go through training as not to confuse their weapons, he said.
Potter’s second-degree charge alleges that Potter acted with “culpable negligence” in Wright’s death.
The first-degree charge alleges that Wright’s death happened while Potter recklessly handled a gun, causing the death to be reasonably foreseeable. An intent to kill is not required in either charge.
‘An error can happen’: Potter defense argued
In the opening statements, the defense said it plans on introducing Dr. Laurence Miller, a psychologist, to testify about traumatic incidents, police work and action errors, which defense attorney Paul Engh said will be “about how it is that we do one thing while meaning to do another.”
Engh gave examples of common mistakes to the jury — including writing the wrong date down or putting in an old password into a computer — that are considered “action errors,” a term he urged the jury to remember.
“They are ordinarily dismissible, but they become quite important when what happens is catastrophic,” Engh said.
“Dr. Miller will tell you in times of chaos, acute stress decisions have to be made when there is no time for reflection,” he added. “What happens in these high catastrophic instances is that the habits that are ingrained, the training that’s ingrained takes over. In these chaotic situations, the historic training is applied and the newer training is discounted.”
Engh said that stun guns have only been available in the last 10 years to the department and this is a brand new stun gun, “whereas, by comparison, Potter has 26 years of gun training. And an error can happen.”
Wright’s mother gives tearful testimony
Katie Wright, who is testifying under the name Katie Bryant, told jurors about the final call she had with her son. She recalled him saying that he had an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror and said he was stopped by police for it.
She also recalled intimate details of Wright’s life. “He was funny, he was a jokester. He liked to make everybody laugh. He had a smile that lit up a room. He was amazing,” she said on the stand.
He had just enrolled in a trade school and planned on pursuing carpentry, she said, and that his son, Daunte Jr., is now two years old.
The jury was shown photos of Wright and his son.
“He was very proud to be a father,” Bryant said. “He was also worried that just because he was premature about him sleeping and he could sleep a lot as a premature baby and he was really worried about that. He would play with him, he would do everything that a father needs to do for his child.”
(MINNEAPOLIS) — The trial of former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter charged in the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was fatally shot during a traffic stop, begins Wednesday.
Opening statements will take place in the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Potter, 49, is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 incident. She has pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Potter has said she meant to grab her stun gun, but accidentally shot her firearm instead when she and other officers were attempting to arrest Wright, who had escaped the officers’ grip and was scuffling with them when he was shot.
Wright was initially pulled over for an expired registration tag on his car, but officers discovered he had an outstanding warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons charge and tried to detain him, according to former Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon.
Potter was first indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge, which alleges that she acted with “culpable negligence” in Wright’s death. A first-degree manslaughter count was later added. Prosecutors say that Potter caused Wright’s death while recklessly handling a gun, causing the death to be reasonably foreseeable.
An intent to kill is not required in either charge.
The maximum sentence for first-degree manslaughter is 15 years and a $30,000 fine and for second-degree manslaughter, it’s 10 years and a $20,000 fine.
Potter resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department two days after the incident.
The jury of 12 jurors and two alternates in the racially charged case is composed of 11 white jurors, one Black juror and two jurors of Asian descent.
Wright’s death reignited protests against racism and police brutality across the U.S., as the killing took place just outside of Minneapolis, where the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd, was taking place.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Dec 08, 6:49 pm
New body-cam footage shows Potter moments after shooting Wright
New body-worn camera footage played in the courtroom while the prosecution questioned Brooklyn Center officer Anthony Luckey showed the moments after Kim Potter shot Daunte Wright.
In the video, taken from Luckey’s body-worn camera, Potter can be seen falling to the curb.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” she said, before hyperventilating for several minutes with her face buried in the grass.
Luckey’s and Sgt. Mychal Johnson’s arms can be seen reaching down to Potter.
“Just breathe,” Luckey can be heard saying.
“I’m going to go to prison,” Potter said.
“No, you’re not,” Luckey said.
“Kim, that guy was trying to take off with me in the car!” Johnson said in the video.
Potter then sat up on the grass and repeatedly said, “Oh my God,” as her colleagues waved traffic by and discussed shutting down the street.
Court has wrapped for the day and will resume at 9 a.m. local time Thursday.
-ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik
Dec 08, 5:23 pm
Massachusetts hospital running at 120% capacity
Massachusetts is facing a surge, even though more than 72% of the state’s total population is fully vaccinated. The state’s daily case average is at its highest point in nearly a year and new hospital admissions have more than doubled in the last month.
In central Massachusetts, the UMass Memorial Health System is seeing more patients than at any other point in the pandemic.
At UMass Memorial Medical Center, all 450 beds are full and 75 patients were waiting in the ER Wednesday for a bed, including seven ICU patients. Between 60% and 75% of the patients aren’t vaccinated.
“This is the worst we’ve ever seen it,” UMass Memorial Health Care president and CEO Dr. Eric Dickson told ABC News Wednesday. “We’re running at more than 120% of capacity right now,”
Dickson said he is “extremely concerned” about how the health system will handle potential increases over the next several weeks and months.
“We’re holding on right now today. But if this keeps on going up for the next five, six weeks, I’m not quite sure where we’re going to get everyone in,” Dickson said.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Dec 08, 3:28 pm
Daunte Wright’s mother recalls final phone call with son
Katie Wright, testifying under the name Katie Bryant, told jurors about the final call she had with her son. She recalled him saying that he had an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror and said he was stopped by police for it.
She told him to take it down and he said he already had.
He said that they were asking about insurance information, and she told him to hand the phone to the officer when he came to the window because the car was not protected by any insurance.
“He just sounded really nervous, but I reassured him that it would be okay,” she said. * *
She heard the police come back to the window, ask Daunte to step out of the vehicle and she heard him ask what he was in trouble for.
She heard a voice tell Daunte to put the phone down and hang up the phone, and heard Duante and the officers begin to scuffle. She said she was then disconnected.
“I was panicked. I called back, it seemed like 100 times but I believe was probably maybe four or five times and I kept calling so finally FaceTimed,” Bryant said. “I don’t know how much time lapsed, maybe a minute or two, and a female, [his girlfriend], answered the phone.”
“She was screaming. I was like, ‘what’s wrong?’ And she said that they shot him and she faced the phone toward the driver’s seat. My son was laying there. He was unresponsive and I heard somebody say ‘hang up the phone again,'” she tearfully recalled.
Dec 08, 2:54 pm
Daunte Wright’s mother is 1st prosecution witness on stand
Katie Wright, testifying under the name of Katie Bryant, is the first witness to take the stand in the trial of Kim Potter who fatally shot her son, Daunte Wright.
Daunte was Katie and Aubrey Wright’s first child together.
She recalled intimate details of Daunte’s life: “He was funny, he was a jokester. He liked to make everybody laugh. He had a smile that lit up a room. He was amazing.”
He had just enrolled in a trade school and planned on pursuing carpentry, she said, and that Daunte’s son, Daunte Jr., is now two years old.
The jury is being shown photos of Daunte, his son and his family. Daunte was shown taking care of his son, who Katie said was born prematurely and was in the hospital for several months.
“He was very proud to be a father,” Katie said. “He was also worried that just because he was premature about him sleeping and he could sleep a lot as a premature baby and he was really worried about that. He would play with him, he would do everything that a father needs to do for his child.”
“He was an amazing dad,” she added.
Dec 08, 2:05 pm
‘An error can happen,’ argues Potter defense
The defense said it plans on introducing Dr. Laurence Miller, a psychologist, to testify about traumatic incidents, police work and action errors, which defense attorney Paul Engh said will be “about how it is that we do one thing while meaning to do another.”
The defense is arguing that the fatal shooting was an accident and that Kim Potter meant to reach for her stun gun and not her firearm when she shot Daunte Wright in the chest.
Engh gave examples of common mistakes to the jury — including writing the wrong date down or putting in an old password into a computer.
“They are ordinarily dismissible, but they become quite important when what happens is catastrophic,” Engh said.
“Dr. Miller will tell you in times of chaos, acute stress decisions have to be made when there is no time for reflection,” he added. “What happens in these high catastrophic instances is that the habits that are ingrained, the training that’s ingrained takes over. In these chaotic situations, the historic training is applied and the newer training is discounted.”
Engh said that stun guns have only been available in the last 10 years to the department and this is a brand new stun gun, “whereas, by comparison, Potter has 26 years of gun training. And an error can happen.”
Dec 08, 1:26 pm
Potter wanted to help domestic abuse victims, her defense says about her career
Defense attorney Paul Engh told the jury details about former Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter, who has pursued a career in law enforcement since she was a teenager in high school.
Engh said that Potter got a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and sociology, and started her career in 1995 as a patrol officer for Brooklyn Center Police Department.
The 26-year veteran to the BCPD, Engh said, “always wanted to be on the streets.”
“She’ll tell you one of the proudest days of her life was to have her dad pin the badge on her so that she can be a police officer,” Engh said.
In particular, Engh said Potter wanted to help domestic abuse victims.
“As she became a part of Brooklyn Center domestic abuse task force … she shepherded women through the court system, became mentors, and made sure they were treated fairly,” Engh said.
Dec 08, 12:25 pm
Prosecution focuses on Daunte Wright, may introduce ‘spark of life’ witness
Prosecutor Erin Eldridge told the jury more about 20-year-old Daunte Wright.
“Daunte Wright himself was just 20 years old — just out of his teens — still had a close relationship with his mother, had a new baby boy, a loving family and his whole adult life ahead of him,” said Eldridge.
She told the jury that he had a large family that he loved, dreams of being a professional basketball player and plans to enroll in a trade school.
The prosecution is expected to have a “spark of life” witness, a Minnesota legal allowance that lets prosecutors present evidence about a murder victim that paints them in a nuanced light, legal experts say.
-ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
Dec 08, 11:57 am
Prosecution hammers Potter’s training
Erin Eldridge, a prosecutor with the Minnesota assistant attorney general’s office, is presenting the state’s case against former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter.
In an opening statement, Eldridge read for the jury the oath that Brooklyn Center officers take: “I will never betray my badge, my integrity. my character, or the public interest. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions.”
Eldridge told jurors that police officers “have the responsibility to be mindful and attentive and acutely aware of the weapons that they carry and the risks associated with those weapons,” targeting Potter’s defense that claims Potter had meant to grab her stun gun instead of her firearm when she fatally shot Daunte Wright.
“When it comes to those weapons, they have the responsibility to carry those weapons, and use those weapons appropriately,” Eldridge added.
Eldridge told the jury that they’ll hear evidence regarding stun gun and firearm training that Potter, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center police department, would have had.
Potter carried her weapons on her belt in the same way every day on the job, Eldridge told the jury, and that she wore her firearm on her dominant, right-hand side and her stun gun on her non-dominant, left side.
“She was also trained about the risks of pulling the wrong weapon and that drawing and firing the wrong weapon could kill someone,” Eldridge said. “She was trained to carry her weapons in this way. And she was trained on how to use them and how not to use them.”
Dec 08, 10:56 am
Daunte Wright’s family enters courtroom
Daunte Wright’s siblings — Damik, Diamond and Dallas — have arrived at the Hennepin County Government Center ahead of opening statements.
Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images
Daunte’s family wants him to be remembered not through the tragedy of his death, but as a brother, son and father who was close with his family.
“On Thanksgiving, we sat there and we watched so many videos of my nephew,” Wright’s aunt Naisha Wright said tearfully in a past interview with ABC News. “It was just such a beautiful thing, because everybody had a memory of him either cracking jokes or trying to dance — because he could not dance, but he tried.”
She added: “He just had his whole life taken away from him. We had our hearts pulled out of our chests. He was my baby.”
Dec 08, 10:13 am
Names prominent in the trial
The state is expected to deliver its opening statement first, represented by Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank.
Judge Chu will call the case, and hand it to the prosecution. Depending on how long each side takes, it is entirely possible the state call its first witness today also.
-ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik
Dec 08, 9:47 am
A look at the jury as trial begins
Opening statements in the trial of former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter will begin Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET at the Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis.
Proceedings will take place in the same courtroom where Derek Chauvin was convicted in the murder of George Floyd.
Potter, 49, is charged with felony first- and second-degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man. She has pleaded not guilty.
Potter’s jury is less diverse than the one that decided Chauvin’s case: nine of the 12 deliberating jurors are white, alongside one Black juror, and two Asian jurors. The two alternate jurors are also white.
The deliberating jury is 75% white — which is aligned with the racial demographics of Hennepin County, according to Census information.
(MELBOURNE, Fla.) — The family of a Florida Institute of Technology student who was fatally shot on campus last week by police and school security officers is launching an independent investigation into the deadly use of force.
Police responded to the Melbourne campus shortly before 11 p.m. Friday after reports of a man armed with a knife attacking students.
A Melbourne Police Department officer and school security confronted the man, identified by police as 18-year-old Alhaji Sow, in a campus building. Both fired their weapons, striking him, after Sow allegedly “lunged” at the police officer with an “edged weapon,” Melbourne police said following the incident. He died at the scene.
Sow’s family has since hired a law firm to investigate the incident and why non-lethal methods were not used by the school security officer to subdue the teenager, attorneys said Wednesday.
“On a college campus, there will undoubtedly be mental health crises that will have to be addressed by the officials of that campus, and they do not always require lethal force,” Greg Francis, a partner at the firm Osborne & Francis, said during a press briefing with the family. “But campus security officers’ only mechanism of dealing with students is a gun. Untold lives will unnecessarily be lost and/or negatively impacted.”
Francis said the investigation will also look at the crisis management training for Melbourne police officers and Florida Tech security officers.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this unbelievably horrific situation. We’ll get answers for these parents and other students on the Florida Tech campus,” Francis said. “We do not want another life to be taken senselessly.”
Sow’s father told reporters that the family was looking forward to Sow coming home for the holidays. “But unfortunately, that is not going to happen,” he said. ” We just want to know why. Why Alhaji have to die like this? We want to know why.”
Francis said they are still investigating what prompted the incident, and that Sow had no history of mental illness.
According to the Melbourne Police Department, which released a timeline Wednesday of the alleged attacks, Sow was “acting erratic” and “attacked multiple students on campus” that night.
Sow allegedly attacked three women in a 15-minute time span, starting with a “physical struggle” with a friend at her campus residence hall around 10:30 p.m., police said. Sow allegedly slapped another woman as he ran from the residence and repeatedly punched another woman at a nearby campus parking garage, police said.
A 911 caller then reported a man believed to be Sow armed with a knife “attacking multiple people and chasing someone,” police said.
Sow allegedly broke into a dormitory, dropped the knife and struck a resident adviser several times before running out a back door, police said.
He then allegedly punched a man outside another residence hall before officers confronted him inside the building in a room, armed with a pair of scissors, shortly after 11 p.m., police said. Sow allegedly lunged at the police officer, “striking the officer’s leg and causing a minor injury,” the department said. The police officer and security officer then discharged their firearms, striking Sow multiple times, police said.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting. The officer is a five-year veteran of the force, police said.
The incident was captured on the police officer’s body-worn camera though won’t be immediately released due to the ongoing investigation, the department said Wednesday.
The identities of the police officer and security officer are not being released at this time.
A Florida Tech spokesperson directed all questions regarding the incident to the Melbourne Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The university will conduct its own review once the law enforcement investigation is completed, school officials said.
Sow, of Riverdale, Georgia, was a sophomore studying aeronautical science, school officials said. He was in his first semester, after earning college credits in high school, said Francis, who called him an “exemplary student.”
The university held a vigil Tuesday night in the wake of the incident and is offering counseling and support to the school community.
“We are committed to doing all that we can to support our campus community,” Florida Tech spokesperson Wes Sumner said in a statement.
(NEW YORK) — Oncologists have been warning about dangerous gaps in cancer care since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, a nationwide study based on data from Veterans Affairs hospitals is raising new alarms.
Since March 2020, COVID-19 has caused a disruption in surgeries and treatments for patients with cancer. At different periods during the pandemic, some states have also required health care facilities to suspend elective procedures, many of which include cancer screenings, to preserve resources during COVID surges.
“This is an area of tremendous concern,” Dr. Norman “Ned” E. Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute, said in an interview in Cancer Prevention Research. “The pandemic has affected cancer screening in a dramatic way…a massive screening deficit over the last 12 months—millions of screening events have been missed,” Sharpless added.
Compared with yearly averages in 2018 and 2019 as a baseline, the number of completed colonoscopies dropped by 45%; proportions of prostate biopsies decreased by 29% ;and cystoscopies for diagnosing bladder cancer decreased by 21% in 2020, according to the study, published online on the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s site.
The study’s researchers estimated that new diagnoses for prostate, lung, colorectal and bladder cancers among the veterans whose data was analyzed also plummeted by 13%, in 2020.
The declines in cancer screening and diagnoses were already striking in the initial months of the pandemic as the country reeled from the first wave of COVID-19 infections. Screening for breast, colorectal and prostate cancers dropped sharply in April 2020, and estimates based on statistical models highlight that 3.9 million breast cancer, 3.8 million colorectal cancer, and 1.6 million prostate cancer diagnoses may have been missed due to pandemic disruptions in care across the overall U.S. population, according to data from JAMA Oncology.
“Like other cancer centers, we observed a distinct downturn in routine cancer screening at the beginning of the pandemic, which has only partially recovered,” Dr. Brian McIver, deputy physician in chief of the Moffitt Cancer Center told ABC News. As a result, some patients were later diagnosed with more advanced stages of cancers that proper screening protocols may have diagnosed earlier, according to McIver.
Calculating the number of missed cancer diagnoses and the proportion of additional patients at risk is difficult and requires additional time for data collection — an endeavor that national organizations, like the NCI, are actively pursuing and monitoring.
Of course, cancer screening tests, which are administered to asymptomatic people and are regularly used for early detection of some types of cancer, are not the only way to catch cancer diagnoses. Patients often learn of their illnesses after developing symptoms and going to their doctors.
But hospitals continue to face challenges in catching up and counteracting existing deficits in important routine cancer screening tests and imaging, numbers of which still have not yet rebounded to pre-pandemic baselines.
“It’s unlikely we have the infrastructure to fully catch up,” said Sharpless in his interview. The situation is further complicated by patients’ own reluctance to seek medical care in the middle of the pandemic.
“There are a lot of moving parts. You have to increase your [healthcare] capacity above the pre-pandemic baseline…[and] the healthcare system is frankly overwhelmed right now,” said Dr. Craig Bunnell, chief medical officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to ABC News. “[Then,] you have people who miss their screenings, [who may] continue to delay or skip [appointments] completely.”
“There’s no reason to believe that cancer incidence is decreased,” said Bunnell. Rather, cancers “are likely to be diagnosed at more advanced stages when the treatment options may be fewer.”
With the new omicron variant now spreading throughout the country and the potential for another surge of cases during the winter months, physicians urge patients to continue practicing safety measures and to keep their medical appointments if possible. “COVID-19 should not prevent any of us from receiving appropriate medical care, including relevant cancer screenings,” says McIver.
Adela Wu, a neurosurgery resident at Stanford Hospital, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Elizabeth Holmes finished her testimony on Wednesday and her defense team rested their case in her criminal fraud trial.
All that’s left now are closing arguments. Then the jury will begin its deliberations.
For the jury to convict Holmes, the founder of the now defunct blood-testing startup Theranos, prosecutors must prove she knowingly misled investors about her company’s technology — a key element in the 11 fraud charges she faces.
Holmes could be sentenced to decades in prison if convicted. The 37-year-old has pleaded not guilty.
As both sides prepare for the last leg of the trial, here’s a look at some of what we’ve learned from the former Theranos CEO.
The buck stopped with her
Throughout the trial, Holmes’ team has suggested that her coworkers — namely the lab directors and her ex-boyfriend and former company COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani — were responsible for certain aspects of the company.
But prosecutors got Holmes to acknowledge that when it came to making decisions at Theranos, the buck stopped with her.
“But, ultimately all roads, as the CEO, lead to you?” U.S. Attorney Robert Leach asked Holmes on day five of her testimony.
“Yes,” Holmes said.
“And is it fair [to say] that the buck stops with you?” Leach continued.
“I felt that,” she replied.
On redirect, Holmes told her attorney Kevin Downey that she felt the buck stopped with her, but said she was not aware of all the decisions that were made at the company.
Relationship with Sunny Balwani
Holmes held back tears during her last day of direct examination as she told jurors that Balwani had repeatedly abused her during their near decade-long relationship. Balwani, her co-defendant in the case, had his trial severed from Holmes earlier this year after learning of the abuse allegations. He has denied those allegations.
On cross examination, Leach sought to poke holes in Holmes’ narrative. He said the couple had texted each other the word “love” at least 594 times in the more than 12,000 messages they exchanged.
“Was just thinking about you and meditating on my tigress,” Balwani texted Holmes in 2015, a message she read aloud in court at Leach’s behest, fighting back tears as she spoke.
Trade secrets
The government called investors to the stand and asked if they knew Theranos used third-party machines to conduct their blood testing. None of the former shareholders testified they did. But many of them said they were sold on the smaller blood-testing device Holmes had coined the “Edison” or the “miniLab.”
Holmes admitted on direct examination her “3.5” device could never run more than 12 clinical tests. Many of the company’s tests offered to patients at Theranos Wellness Centers in Walgreens stores were run on modified third-party machines, she said.
Asked why Holmes never shared that information with her investors, or even Walgreens, she chalked it up to trade secrets.
If Theranos’ proprietary info got out, “the big medical device companies like Siemens could easily reproduce what we had done,” Holmes testified. “They had more engineers than we did and a lot more resources.”
On cross examination, Leach barely broached the topic. But he did get Holmes to admit that it would be wrong if Theranos told investors that the company was not using modified third-party devices.
Holmes said she informed the FDA, her board of directors and the federal lab regulator, CMS, that she was running tests on third-party devices because, unlike the investors, they could assure protection of her intellectual property. Although, during the cross-examination, Leach pointed out that Gen. James Mattis, a then-Theranos board member, testified he was unaware of the modified third-party devices.
Altered documents
Prosecutors have repeatedly suggested Holmes doctored documents while she was running Theranos. In her testimony, Holmes owned up to — but reframed — some of those allegations.
On her second day of direct examination, she said she placed the logos of two pharmaceutical companies on blood-testing validation reports. She acknowledged she did this without the drugmakers’ permission and before she sent them to Walgreens.
“I wish I had done it differently,” she said on the stand Nov. 23 while being questioned by her attorney.
Leach later used that very same phrase six times on Nov. 30, the first day of his cross examination.
“Is that another thing you wish you had done differently?” he asked Holmes.
“One hundred percent,” she replied before later saying, “There are many things I wish I did differently.”
Leach also pointed to a third altered pharma report, which had been originally created by the drugmaker, GlaxoSmithKline, after the company evaluated Theranos’ technology. Like the other reports, the changes Holmes said she made to this document included the company’s logo.
Downey characterized the issue of doctoring documents as a “sideshow” on Tuesday, suggesting that Holmes did not conceal the reports because two of the three altered versions were sent directly to the drugmakers.
(NIAGARA FALLS) — One woman was killed after the car she was in crashed into the waters on top of the American side of Niagara Falls Wednesday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The black sedan was roughly 75 to 100 yards from the brink of the falls Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation told ABC affiliate WKBW.
The Coast Guard said the unidentified female driver was pronounced dead at the scene after they sent a helicopter to airlift people from the vehicle.
It is not immediately known how the car crashed into the river or if there was anyone else in the vehicle.
(NEW YORK) — Several students in Michigan, including some in middle school, have been hit with criminal charges alleging they posted online threats to stage copycat attacks like the one eight days ago at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit that left four teenagers dead, authorities said.
“They are saying, ‘I’m going to bomb the school. I’m going to kill people,'” Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit told ABC affiliate station WXYZ in Detroit.
Of the students charged, one faces a count of possession of a weapon in a school, authorities said.
Savit said most of the students thought they were making anonymous threats online.
“Even if you believe you make it through an anonymous social media account, law enforcement has ways to track you down and find you and when that happens, you’re going to get charged,” Savit said.
Savit said his office has charged two students with making threats, both middle school students.
The Harper Woods Police Department in Wayne County announced the arrests of two students for making threats.
Waterford police in Oakland County told WXYZ they arrested an eighth-grader from Mason Middle School in Waterford after he posted a firearm on social media with the caption, “Bro mason your next I’m coming for you on Tuesday.”
Prosecutors in Macomb County said five students are also facing charges of making threats against schools and another five students are facing similar charges in Macomb County, according to WXYZ.
Meanwhile, Texas police are also investigating a high school student who allegedly made an online threat against his Houston area school.
The Klein Intermediate School District Police Department said it is working with the Harris County district attorney to bring criminal charges against the student.
David Kimberly, the school district’s police chief, said during a news conference on Wednesday that officials at Klein Cain High School received a string of threats of violence against the campus via social media on Monday and Tuesday.
In a letter to parents, Kimberly said his officers worked with the FBI to track down the student, who has since been expelled from the school.
The copycat threats follow the deadly Nov. 30 attack at Oxford High School that also left eight people wounded.
Ethan Crumbley, 15, a student at Oxford High School, was charged as an adult with two dozen crimes, including murder, attempted murder and terrorism, for the shooting rampage at the Oakland County school. Crumbley’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, who allegedly provided their son with the gun used in the school shooting, were also arrested and charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and remain in jail on $500,000 bail each.
Ethan Crumbly and his parents have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
