Protests erupt after US police fatally shoot another black man

BROOKLYN CENTRE (Minnesota) • Anti-police protests broke out in a Minnesota city when an officer fatally shot a young black man after stopping his vehicle for a traffic violation on Sunday, about 16km from where Mr George Floyd was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis last May.

As angry crowds swelled into the hundreds outside the Brooklyn Centre Police Department building, officers in riot gear fired rubber bullets, lobbed flash bangs at protesters and let off clouds of chemical irritants.

The man killed by police was identified by his relatives and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Mr Daunte Wright, 20.

Mr Walz said he was monitoring the unrest in Brooklyn Centre, a suburb of Minneapolis, as "our state mourns another life of a black man taken by law enforcement".

Outside the police building on Sunday night, people chanted "Black lives, they matter here" and "Hands up, don't shoot", as police fired objects towards the crowd.

Anti-police protesters have spent recent days rallying in Minneapolis as the trial of Derek Chauvin, a white former city policeman, enters the third week in a courthouse ringed with barriers and soldiers from the National Guard.

Chauvin faces murder and manslaughter charges for kneeling on the neck of Mr Floyd, a 46-year-old black man in handcuffs, during the arrest last May. Videos of the incident sparked global protests against police brutality.

A curfew was imposed in Brooklyn Centre until 6am yesterday, Mayor Mike Elliott said. "We want to make sure everyone is safe. Please be safe and please go home," he tweeted.

Mr Wright's mother, Mrs Katie Wright, said she got a call from her son on Sunday afternoon telling her police had pulled him over for having air fresheners dangling from his rear-view mirror, which is illegal in Minnesota. She could hear police tell her son to get out the vehicle, she said.

"I heard scuffling, and I heard police officers say, 'Daunte, don't run'," she said through tears. The conversation ended, and she called his number again, and his girlfriend answered and said he was dead in the driver's seat.

Mrs Wright said her son was in a vehicle his family had just given him two weeks ago.

Brooklyn Centre police said officers pulled over a man for a traffic violation just before 2pm, and found he had an outstanding arrest warrant. As police tried to arrest him, he got back in the car. One officer shot the man. He drove several blocks before striking another vehicle and dying at the scene.

Police say both officers' body cameras were recording during the incident. The state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said it was investigating the shooting.

The Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said another independent agency should investigate, and demanded the immediate release of any videos of the shooting.

The group said it had "deep concerns that police here appear to have used dangling air fresheners as an excuse for making a pretextual stop, something police do all too often to target black people".

Near the site of the shooting, protesters yelled angrily at a line of police in riot gear holding long batons in front of them. Some protesters vandalised two police vehicles, pelting them with stones and jumping on them. Police fired rubber bullets, hitting at least two in the crowd and leaving a man bleeding from the head.

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG