Daunte Wright’s Death Proves We Don’t Need More Police Training

This op-ed argues that more funding and training won't fix a criminal justice system rooted in oppression and racism.
A demonstrator holds a photo of Daunte Wright and shouts Don't shoot at the police after curfew as people protest the...
KEREM YUCEL

A Black man was shot and killed by a police officer in Minnesota. Afterward, protestors hit the streets, and the state responded by deploying the National Guard. It feels like we’ve gone back in time, hearing the news of 20-year-old Daunte Wright being killed on Sunday, April 11, almost a year after George Floyd and about 12 miles from where Floyd lost his life. An honest assessment of these crimes is that they aren’t committed by “bad apples” with momentary lapses of judgement; these police killings are the product of a system rooted in oppression and racism. A system that emboldened Derek Chauvin to press his knee into Floyd's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, killing him outside a grocery store in broad daylight. A system that says Black people have to prove they deserved to live when killed unjustly by those in power. A system that will likely put Wright on trial for his own death, as happens so often when a Black person is killed by police.

I, like a majority of people, voted for Joe Biden and felt a temporary sense of relief for having played a part in the removal of our last president from office. But that relief has turned to profound skepticism now that the dust has settled. This administration’s lack of willingness to make radical changes to address the life-or-death problems we’re facing have become glaringly clear. In February, Biden said he wants to invest more money in policing. Reiterating his campaign trail promise to invest $300 million to go toward hiring diverse officers and training programs intended to improve relationships between officers and communities. This administration and mainstream Democrats might mean well with these calls for more training, but anyone familiar with American history can see that more money and more training won’t lead us to fewer killings of unarmed Black citizens at the hands of police. It won’t fix the racism that led to the creation of the institution of slavery or the modern-day police practices that are new iterations of a system designed to control and regulate Black people.

After Philando Castile was shot and killed by a Minnesota police officer, in 2016, the state established a $12 million law enforcement training fund. Less than four years later, the world watched video footage of a Minnesota law enforcement officer kill Floyd; and almost a year after that, we learn of Wright’s killing by Minnesota law enforcement. Chauvin, the officer charged with murder for kneeling on Floyd’s neck, was a field-training officer. Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the police force, was training a new officer on Sunday when she allegedly mistook her gun for a taser and fatally shot Wright, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Training is not enough. Training won’t make “routine traffic stops” any less terrifying for Black people. Training won’t hold police officers to, at the very least, the same standards as regular citizens after taking a life. Training won’t make the hateful and racist police officers flying “blue lives matter” flags tolerant and decent human beings. Training won’t save us.

This isn’t an inevitable evil. This is addressable. To the politicians who utter words about their “thoughts and prayers,” your “thoughts” aren’t helpful and your “prayers” are still going unanswered. The price for this empty gesture? More life. Life that has never been valued by the system that our political leaders continue fighting to preserve. Life that our current system was created to disrespect, diminish, and destroy. George Floyd should still be here. Daunte Wright should still be here.

Wright’s former mentor, Jonathan Mason, described him to the Star-Tribune as “funny, he was lively…. He had a very, very welcoming personality. He would joke with you back and forth.” Mason mentored Wright while he was a student at Edison High School, which is the same school where Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, once worked. That’s where she crossed paths with Wright, describing him as “a silly boy, as goofy as can be,” who required extra attention because he “needed a lot of love.”

I want justice for Daunte Wright. I want justice for George Floyd. But what I want more than that is for them to still be here. True justice is dismantling the system that took them from their loved ones — shattering their communities and the hearts of Black people nationwide. Tired doesn’t feel like an adequate description of the level of exhaustion felt in this continuous state of mourning. With every headline about a Black life taken too soon, we ache. These names, these faces, these people — our people — they live in our bones. Generational trauma compounded with the pain of our present-day atrocities and the thought of this persisting, in one way or another, over the next several years, decades, centuries — it’s infuriating.

It doesn’t have to be this way. America doesn’t have to be this way. Every day that our elected officials choose to “play it safe” so as not to upset the status quo, they are active participants in upholding the racist ideals and institutions that are the very foundation of our country. The time for a new status quo is long overdue. The question is, how many more Black lives will be taken before American politicians commit to making the changes necessary for us to become the country we say we are? Because until Black people are treated with the same care and respect as white Americans, the loose thread that this country is hanging on by will continue to unravel — for all of the world to see.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: The History of Policing in the United States Is About Controlling Black Lives

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