BRUCE BISPING ¥ bbisping@startribune.com Brooklyn Center, MN., Thursday, 5/31/2007. Officer Kim Potter, part of the Brooklyn Center Police negotiation team. (Photo by Bruce Bisping/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
Just 10 miles from where Derek Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd, another case of police violence is unfolding. On Sunday afternoon, a police officer in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center reportedly pulled over Daunte Wright for driving with expired tags. The situation escalated when the officer learned that there was an outstanding warrant for Wright’s arrest. The attempted arrest turned fatal when the officer shot Wright. Now, as countless people take to the streets in protest, the incident is being labeled an “accidental discharge.”
Kim Potter, the 26-year veteran law enforcement official who shot Wright, is now the subject of an investigation after body camera footage showed her allegedly mistaking her gun for her taser. During a news conference, Brooklyn Center police chief Tim Gannon said it appeared as though Potter intended to fire her taser but instead accidentally fired her gun. “Taser! Taser! Taser!” Potter can be heard shouting in the footage before screaming, “Holy shit! I just shot him.” The video stopped moments later. Two other unnamed officers were on the scene when Potter pulled Wright over.
Brian Peters, head of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, told theStar Tribune that at the time of the shooting, Potter was working as a field training officer, training a new police officer. According to the Tribune, Potter had been on the force for quite some time — originally receiving her police license in 1995 — and even served as her police union’s president.
Gannon says that Potter’s actions were consistent with her training and Wright’s death was accidental. He claims that Potter “had the intention” to deploy her taser “but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet.” In the meantime, Potter has been suspended pending the results of a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigation. The organization made a brief statement citing an active investigation but that Potter was on “standard administrative leave.”
However, many question how Potter could have mistaken her gun for a taser. The standard-issue guns for the Brooklyn Center Police Department all weigh significantly more than a typical taser. Further, tasers are designed to feel and look different from guns in order to avoid this type of confusion. What’s more, a gun requires disabling a safety locking feature in order to use it. “If you train enough, you should be able to tell,” Scott A. DeFore, a retired sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department toldThe New York Times. The body camera footage does not show how Potter carried her weapons; however, it does show one of her fellow police officers with his gun on one side and his taser on the other.
Rich Stanek, a former police officer, and law enforcement consultant, told Minneapolis’ ABC affiliate station that officers are trained to carry their taser on the opposite side of their belt from their gun. Specifically, away from their non-dominant hand as instances in which a taser is used are not deemed life-threatening.
This type of discharge is not an isolated incident in Minnesota, either. In 2002, Officer Gregory Siem shot a man named Christofar Atak at close range while mistakenly using his Glock instead of his taser. The case was settled for $900,000, and the police force committed to training their officers better. However, in August 2020, the Star Tribune published a story referencing Minneapolis police data that showed that the predominantly white city’s law enforcement disproportionately stopped and searched Black and East African drivers and their vehicles during routine traffic stops.
Between June 2019 to May 2020, Black drivers accounted for 78% of police searches for moving or equipment violations. Only 12% of searches in that same time frame were of white people, despite the city being made up of 63.6% white people.
Potter’s “intention,” as the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension put it, is not the issue at stake. Rather, it’s that police officers — even the ones pulling people over for traffic violations — are fully armed and capable of killing, and seem to continue targeting Black citizens. Potter’s “intention,” whatever it might have been, resulted in yet another Black man’s death. And to that point, Wright is yet another Black man killed by police in Minneapolis, a city that has been in mourning from racist police killings for years, but especially since Philando Castile was shot and killed at a traffic stop while his girlfriend and child were in the car in 2016.
“An ‘accidental discharge’ that kills someone has another name: manslaughter,” New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman tweeted. “We don’t need police with lethal weapons carrying out routine traffic stops. Re-allocate police funding to unarmed traffic forces to remove even the possibility of state-sanctioned manslaughter.”
While Potter has yet to publicly comment, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliot said he believes she should be terminated. “My position is that we cannot afford to make mistakes that lead to the loss of life of other people in our profession,” he said during a news conference. “And so I do fully support releasing the officer of her duties.”
Ben Crump, an attorney for Wright’s family, also made a statement calling the shooting “entirely preventable” and “inhumane.”
“As Minneapolis and the rest of the country continue to deal with the tragic killing of George Floyd, now we must also mourn the loss of this young man and father,” Crump said.
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Do you ever dream of finding out your horrible mother sold you — messy bun and all — to be a One Direction sex slave? Or are you more familiar with the dark twisted tale of a famous K-pop threesome, living fast at the helm of a vicious mafia in Seoul, playing with… guns? Or, maybe you live in a world where hot anime characters moonlight as dopey college students with stimulating tongue rings? Or perhaps, all you — (y/n) — want is for the two obviously gay characters in a popular show to just make out? If you need to check your pulse when you read the phrase: “there was only one bed” or worse, “(y/n) woke up one morning with the sudden urge to vomit,” don’t worry: You’re in good company.
Welcome to the cringey-beautiful world of erotic fanfiction, also known as smut, where celebrities and fictional characters get both figuratively and literally bent over by lust-minded writers with thirsty readerships. What once was a dirty secret within geeky fandoms is now semi-mainstream, thanks to our recent surplus of free time and horniness. Not all fanfiction is erotic — some can be a simple exploration into alternative plotlines for beloved characters. But smut, fanfiction’s sexually explicit problem child, is all about seeing everything through a lens of sex. Smut is made according to the same rules as porn: If it exists, there’s probably smut about it — even the ship stuck in the Suez Canal isn’t out of bounds.
When 32-year-old Rory* learned her coworkers were all well-acquainted with fanfic vernacular, she realized she was among her people. Rory remembers, after a few post-work drinks, admitting to her coworkers: “I read things at work that I probably shouldn’t be reading at work.” After a pause, someone asked what she meant, exactly, and Rory said, “I’ve kind of gotten really into this fanfic stuff.” Turns out, she was in a veritable summit of fanfiction enthusiasts – with everything from Harry Potter to BTS fandoms represented. After they exchanged AO3 tags, Rory confirmed that, while she might be hornier than most of her colleagues, she felt she was in good company all the same.
Rory explains that, compared to porn, with smut, “you get more of the burning and the lusting, especially if it’s a slow-burn fanfic where they both like each other, but neither of them will admit it and there is so much tension.” But despite all this talk of slow-burns, the fact that fanfic is based on characters who readers already know allows for easier access to the good stuff. By pulling from familiar faces and backstories, fanfiction writers can offer complex and emotionally charged sex scenes in the same amount of time it takes a busty housewife on Pornhub to realize she has no money to pay for pizza.
But does that explain why so many people are now flocking to fanfiction? Melissa*, a 29-year old who not only reads but also writes fanfiction, has given the “why” a lot of thought: “We know what this world is. We know what the plot is. Let’s skip to the smut.” No matter the characters — be they celebrities or literal ships (still looking at you Suez Canal smut) — fanfiction doesn’t need a gratuitous plot. What’s more, fanfic doesn’t have to please critics, nor fit into guidelines about what’s appropriate; and, as Melissa puts it,“my mind has a higher special effects budget and better cinematography.” Fanfiction writers are free to explore sex in ways that writers who share their works on screens or through publishers have never been able to, which means smut often subverts the male gaze and centers queer desire in ways mainstream media has often teased but never delivered on. If the fandom says now kith, the fic will make it happen.
Literary snobs who might scoff at the idea of diving into fanfic can also look to people like longtime fanfiction reader and writer, Karla*, a 32-year-old product support specialist, says that — even as an English major — she probably reads more fanfiction than she does books. She’s read plenty of bodice-rippers, or as she calls them “old lady novels,” and says they’re great, “but those also get pretty campy as well. At that point, you might as well just read fanfiction.”
Even if you don’t read smut, you’ve certainly been touched by it: If the jocks and cheerleaders of the world point and laugh at the enemies-to-lovers fic reader, remind them of their mom’s dedication to the 50 Shades of Grey book and movie franchise. Lest we forget, that whole phenomenon all started as Twilight smut posted to fanfiction.net. Or point to the many book deals that emerged from Wattpad, like the Harry Styles fic-inspired After, which was later adapted into a film.
Or, you could just point to the meme that Karla’s brother — who doesn’t read fic, but knows she does — sent her recently. It asked: “Would you rather read a critically acclaimed book or would you rather read fan fiction written by a 13-year-old who has no idea about sex?”The response is really the only one that matters: “Is the fan fiction good though.”
*Some names have been changed.
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