The suburb of Minneapolis in the north of the United States saw the seventh evening of demonstrations on Saturday after the death last Sunday of Daunte Wright, a young black man killed by a white policewoman during a banal traffic control.
Nearly 300 people gathered throughout the evening in front of the Brooklyn Center City Police Station.
The day before, the police had announced that they had made nearly 100 arrests for violating the curfew and illegal assembly.
This time the police remained behind the gates set up in front of the police station, and more than a hundred demonstrators remained on site after the curfew came into effect at 11:00 p.m. (04:00 a.m. GMT).
“I’m here tonight, because I just couldn’t sit idly by,” Maxine Waters, Democrat elected in the House of Representatives, said on the sidelines of the demonstration.
“Police across the country need to be transformed (…) We need to re-imagine how to deal with the problems in our society, without people, and people of color in particular, being killed by a police that we pay for. protect us and serve us, ”said the elected representative of California.
Maxine Waters said he would stay in Minnesota at least until Monday to attend the final indictments and pleadings in the Minneapolis trial of Derek Chauvin, the former white police officer accused of the murder of George Floyd last year, before returning Washington.
“George Floyd’s death was less than a year ago, and to see Daunte Wright’s life taken from him by another policeman, it just made me wonder, why is this? this is happening, ”said John Dabla, a 28-year-old educator at a Minneapolis school.
Daunte Wright, a young black man, died in Brooklyn Center after a policewoman shot him during an ordinary traffic stop, claiming to have mistaken his pistol for his Taser.
Policewoman Kim Potter was arrested Wednesday on charges of “manslaughter”.