AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Decision expected on charges for cop who shot Black motorist
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) — Prosecutors expect to decide Wednesday whether to charge the white former police officer who fatally shot a Black man during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb, sparking nights of protests and raising tensions amid the nearby murder trial of the ex-officer charged with killing George Floyd.
Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter and Police Chief Tim Gannon resigned Tuesday, two days after Potter shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright. Gannon has said he believed Potter mistakenly grabbed her pistol when she was trying to pull out her Taser.
Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott said at a news conference that the city had been moving toward firing Potter, a 26-year veteran, when she resigned. Elliott said he hoped her resignation would “bring some calm to the community,” but that he would keep working toward “full accountability under the law.”
Washington County Attorney Pete Orput told WCCO-AM that he had received information on the case from state investigators and hoped to have a charging decision on Wednesday. Orput did not respond to a message from The Associated Press. While the shooting happened in Hennepin County, prosecutors referred the case to nearby Washington County — a practice county attorneys in the Minneapolis area adopted last year in handling police deadly force cases.
“We have to make sure that justice is served, justice is done. Daunte Wright deserves that. His family deserves that,” Elliott said.
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Expert: Ex-cop justified in pinning George Floyd to pavement
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The defense for a former police officer charged in George Floyd’s death challenged the heart of the case against the officer, calling a use-of-force expert who testified that Derek Chauvin was justified in pinning Floyd and said it might have gone easier if the Black man had been “resting comfortably” on the pavement.
Taking the stand Tuesday at Chauvin’s murder trial, Barry Brodd, a former Santa Rosa, California, officer, stoutly defended Chauvin’s actions, even as a prosecutor pounded away at the witness, banging the lectern at one point during cross-examination and growing incredulous over Brodd’s use of the “resting comfortably” phrase.
“It’s easy to sit and judge … an officer’s conduct,” Brodd testified. “It’s more of a challenge to, again, put yourself in the officer’s shoes to try to make an evaluation through what they’re feeling, what they’re sensing, the fear they have, and then make a determination.”
He said he doesn’t believe Chauvin and the other officers used deadly force when they held Floyd down on his stomach, his hands cuffed behind his back and Chauvin’s knee on his neck or neck area for what prosecutors say was 9 1/2 minutes.
Brodd likened it instead to a situation in which officers use a Taser on someone fighting with officers, and the suspect falls, hits his head and dies: “That isn’t an incident of deadly force. That’s an incident of an accidental death.”
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US to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America that were coordinated from that country, several U.S. officials said.
Biden will lay out his vision for the way forward in Afghanistan and the timeline for the withdrawal in remarks Wednesday afternoon, The White House said. Punctuating the nearly two decades U.S. troops have fought and died in Afghanistan, the president will then visit Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery to honor the sacrifice of those who died in recent American conflicts.
The decision to withdraw troops by fall defies a…
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