A Minneapolis police officer shot and killed a man during a traffic stop on Wednesday night, the first death by a department member since George Floyd’s death in May, a police spokesman said.
At least one police officer shot the man during a firefight after police pulled the man about a mile from where Floyd was killed, said John Elder, the spokesman.
Floyd’s death led to charges against four police officers – including one facing a second-degree murder charge – and large protests sustained across the United States after a video showed that an officer kept his knee in Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
Many details about the shooting on Wednesday were not immediately clear. Mr Elder said the police stopped a driver because he was wanted for a crime, although Mr Elder said he did not know what the crime was. The driver, who was not immediately identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Mr. Elder said that at least one police officer was using a body camera and that it was activated during the shooting.
No police officers were injured, he said, and an adult woman in the passenger seat of the man’s car was also unharmed. He did not know how many police officers had been on the scene or whether more than one had fired their weapons, nor did he know the race of those involved.
The Minnesota Criminal Seizure Department, a state agency, is leading the investigation into the police shooting.
videos posted connected by a reporter for The Star Tribune showed that people quickly entered the scene, some of whom were shouting at the police.
After Floyd’s death on May 25, outside the Cup Foods convenience store, protesters stormed the city, demanding that the police be charged. Some people set fire to a police station after the police withdrew and several companies were set on fire; weeks later, a man’s body was found in a charred pawnshop.
The three Minneapolis police officers who arrested Floyd on the sidewalk were soon fired, along with a fourth at the scene. Derek Chauvin, the former officer who held his knee around Mr. Floyd’s neck, was charged with second-degree murder and wrongful death, and the other three were accused of assisting and inciting him. They all pleaded not guilty; a trial is scheduled for March, but a motion by lawyers for some of the officers to delay the trial is pending.
In response to police killings this year of Floyd and other blacks, including Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., And Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, protests spread across the country, reaching coastal cities familiar with demonstrations, such as Portland, Oregon. and New York, but also small towns across the Midwest and South.
Several cities responded by seeking police reforms and budget cuts. The Minneapolis City Council voted this month to divert $ 8 million from the Police Department to other services in the city, about 4.5% of the department’s proposed budget, but the initial pledges of many Council members to “end the policing as we know it ”failed.