IT’S BECOME AN AMERICAN routine: a sudden death followed by public displays of grief and protest, and a sorting of two distant camps. Some will call the death an egregious, extrajudicial killing statistically unlikely to be redressed; to others, almost without exception, it is justifiable homicide. The machinery of justice is once again asked how to respond when police officers end civilian lives—a disproportionate share of which are Black.
But this week in metro Minneapolis, a rare police trial connected to one Black man’s death could not conclude before another died. In Brooklyn Center, a diverse bedroom community of around 31,000 about 10 miles north of Minneapolis, the April 11 shooting of Daunte Wright, 20, by Kim Potter, a white police officer who has since resigned, has set off protests…