Kim Potter saw Daunte Wright clearly. But belatedly.

It’s impossible to fathom what justice should look like in the death of Daunte Wright. He was 20 years old when he was pulled over by two Brooklyn Center police officers in April and the minor traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb escalated into a scuffle.

From the beginning, the stop was a mess. The rookie police officer approached Wright because of expired license tags at a time when the country’s motor vehicle offices were backlogged because of the coronavirus pandemic. He stopped him for a trifle — for an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. Wright’s paperwork was a mess. He called his mother.

When officers discovered Wright had an outstanding warrant for carrying a handgun in a public place without a state permit, they tried to handcuff him. Wright resisted. Kim Potter, who was a training officer, stepped in to assist. As the situation turned chaotic, she yelled “Taser, Taser, Taser,” before mistakenly shooting and killing Wright with her gun. In the immediate aftermath, Potter screamed expletives over her deadly actions and cried out to God in her distress. She tearfully reckoned with what she believed to be her due punishment. And she saw Wright with a clarity — a belated clarity — that too often gets clouded over in our culture.

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