$3.25 Million Settlement for Family of Daunte Wright, Killed by an Officer Who Mistook Gun for Taser
Won by Ben Crump Law.
Ben Crump and co-counsel representing the family of Daunte Wright reached a $3.25 million settlement with the City of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, over the 2021 traffic-stop shooting in which officer Kim Potter fired her handgun after shouting "Taser." The agreement, announced in June 2022, also called for changes to the department's policing practices and ranked among the largest civil rights wrongful-death settlements in Minnesota history.
What happened
On April 11, 2021, Brooklyn Center police pulled over 20-year-old Daunte Wright for expired registration tabs and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. The stop happened roughly ten miles from the Minneapolis courtroom where Derek Chauvin was then standing trial for the murder of George Floyd. When officers moved to arrest Wright on an outstanding warrant and he pulled away toward his car, veteran officer Kim Potter shouted "Taser! Taser! Taser!", and fired her service pistol into his chest. Wright drove a short distance and crashed; he died at the scene. Potter's body camera captured her immediate realization that she had drawn the wrong weapon.
The shooting set off days of protests in Brooklyn Center and renewed national scrutiny of pretextual traffic stops, the practice of using minor equipment violations as grounds to pull over and investigate drivers, which falls disproportionately on Black motorists. Wright's family retained Ben Crump, then simultaneously representing the Floyd family, along with co-counsel who had worked on the Floyd civil case.
Potter resigned within days and was prosecuted. In December 2021, a Hennepin County jury convicted her of first- and second-degree manslaughter, and she was sentenced to two years. The criminal verdict, a rarity in on-duty police shootings, strengthened the family's parallel civil claims against the city.
On June 21, 2022, the family's attorneys announced a $3.25 million settlement agreement with the City of Brooklyn Center, with $1.75 million of the payment coming from the League of Minnesota Cities insurance trust. At the time it was reported as the third-largest civil rights wrongful-death settlement in Minnesota history, behind only the Floyd and Justine Ruszczyk Damond settlements. Beyond the money, the agreement called for changes in Brooklyn Center policing aimed at preventing stops like the one that ended Wright's life.
The Wright settlement illustrates how Crump's team leveraged the momentum of the Floyd litigation into accountability for a neighboring city's police department, resolving the civil claims of a working-class family against a small suburb without forcing them through years of federal litigation.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.MPR News: Daunte Wright family has a $3.25M settlement agreement with city of Brooklyn Center·Archived copy
- 2.Star Tribune: Brooklyn Center reaches settlement with Daunte Wright's family for $3.25 million·Archived copy
- 3.CCX Media: Daunte Wright Family Reaches $3.25 Million Settlement with City of Brooklyn Center·Archived copy
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