Sunny Hostin highlights pain of Black mothers in response to Daunte Wright shooting: ‘This just has to stop’
Sunny Hostin got real about the pain caused by police shootings of unarmed Black people on The View.
On Tuesday, Hostin emotionally responded to Whoopi Goldberg when Hostin's co-host asked about the recent police shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minn., being called an accident. Officials claimed that former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter fired her handgun instead of her taser. Hostin, a lawyer, disagreed with the ruling and called the explanation into question.
"I don't even like the term 'accident' because I think it almost takes away responsibility from that officer," Hostin said. "You're talking about a 26-year veteran, I don't understand how she could have possibly confused, as a 26-year-veteran, the weight of a handgun with the weight of a taser. Officers are trained to put the tasers on their non-dominant side and their handgun on their dominant side so that this type of thing doesn't happen. It's odd to me that she would have confused the two and mishandled the weaponry."
Hostin also brought up the point that Potter was training another officer the day of the shooting, which troubled her.
"This notion that you stop an unarmed Black man motorist because he had air fresheners dangling from his rearview mirror, this state is one a few states that has that law and there have been many social justice activists that have pointed to that particular type of law that is frequently typically used as a pretext for racial profiling, a pretext for stopping young Black men in their cars. So the fact that she was training someone and that was the way this traffic stop started, tells me a lot, tells me that this could have been a pretextual stop, a racial profiling stop," Hostin explained.
Wright was pulled over for having an expired registration on the vehicle he was driving, Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said. Officers then discovered that a "gross misdemeanor warrant" for Wright's arrest had previously been issued. Potter attempted to arrest Wright and alleged that he tried to flee, which is when she fatally shot Wright. There has been unrest in the area following the shooting, which took place just minutes away from the Derek Chauvin trial. As of Tuesday Potter and the BCPD police chief resigned and no charges have been filed.
Hostin, a mother of two, solemnly noted the pain that too many Black mothers experience in the wake of police shootings of unarmed Black men and women. She went on to discuss the toll these conversations have had on her.
"I, too, feel, Whoopi, like Gabriel my son looks like Daunte," she continued. "And the thought that he has his driver's license and gets into his car just to get his car washed, and he could end up this way, is just traumatizing. As Black mothers, we just want to protect our kids just like white mothers, we just want our children to come home to us. This just has to stop… Yesterday, a lot of viewers were tweeting to me that I just looked upset yesterday and I was, and I still am. I'm tired of talking about this kind of thing. It happens way too much."
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