Social Media Reaction Swift, Defiant in Latest Minnesota Police Shooting

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April 14, 2021

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(FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. )  —The Twin Cities have been a powderkeg since the start of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd last year.

Then Sunday, another young Black man was gunned down by police and on Monday, Brooklyn Center Chief Tim Gannon told the media and the public that the shooting was ‘accidental’, that the officer thought she had grabbed her taser and not her gun.

Social media wasn’t buying it.

Shortly after that announcement, the officer who fired that fatal shot into Wright’s chest was identified as a 26-year veteran of the force.

And while social media reaction was pouring in at a rate almost too fast to collate, news outlets like the New York Times were attempting to provide perspective, while President Biden empathized with Wright’s family and called for unity.

The social media audience was also trying to provide balance and, in many cases, quickly clapped back.

Late in the day Monday, with violence expected, authorities instituted a curfew, and all professional sports in the Twin Cities were called off. That didn’t stop Black celebrities and athletes from giving their thoughts.

Perhaps the most scathing was from former NFL receiver Doug Baldwin Jr., whose father was a police officer for more than three decades.

Bernice King, a minister and the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., shared a sign capturing her thoughts and wrote, “My heart goes out to Daunte Wright’s mother. I mourn that she’ll never see her son again…that his name is now a hashtag.”

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